Macaulay's essay on Lord Clive;

i V

MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON

LORD CLIVE

EDITED

WITH INTRODUCTION NOTES etc.
BY

WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON

Staff-Lecturer in Literature to the University Extension Board

of the University of London

Author of " An Introduction to the Study of Literature" etc.
Editor of " The Elizabethan Shakespeare" etc.

LONDON
GEORGE G. HARRAP & COMPANY

PORTSMOUTH STREET LINCOLN'S INN W.C.
1910

f-71
M2.

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I. MACAULAY'S LIFE AND WORK . . vii

II. MACAULAY AS AN ESSAYIST . . . xix

III. THE ESSAY ON CLIVE . . xxx

MAP OF INDIA xxxiv

LORD CLIVE ... !

NOTES .

.114

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE . . . .143

INTRODUCTION

MACAULAY'S LIFE AND WORK

Thomas Babington Macaulay, essayist and historian, was
born on October 25, 1800, at Rothley Temple, Lincoln-
shire, in the home of his father's brother-in-law, Thomas
Babington, after whom he was named. His life, as we shall
see, was destined to be a singularly prosperous one, and it
has been well said that his good fortune began with the
moment of his birth, since he came of a stock the sterling
qualities of which were almost a guarantee of intellectual
vigour and moral integrity in all who belonged to it. His
father, Zachary Macaulay, a West India merchant, was
of Scottish Presbyterian descent, and reckoned several
ministers of the Church among his ancestors. Though a
silent, unsociable man, of somewhat stern temper and un-
attractive manners, he was a zealous philanthropist, and for
many years devoted the best of his energies, even to the
sacrifice of his business, to the one great cause he had most
at heart — that of the abolition of slavery in the British
colonies. He had married in 1799 Selina Mills, the
daughter of a Bristol quaker, an excellent woman in whom
firmness of character and sound good sense were admirably
blended with tenderness and sensibility. She had been the
pupil and was still the friend of the then famous woman of
letters, Hannah More, who in earlier life had known Johnson,
Burke, Garrick, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and through whom,
therefore, the Macaulay family was, as it were, brought into
vii

viii INTRODUCTION

personal touch with some of the greatest figures of the
preceding generation. Next to his mother, it was Hannah
More who exercised the most powerful influence over young
Macaulay's mind. He visited her at her home at Barley
Wood, near Bristol, and the formation of his library was
begun with her help and advice.

He was a marvellously precocious child, and early ex-
hibited those intellectual qualities by which in manhood
he was specially to be marked— an insatiable and almost
undiscriminating appetite for books, prodigious powers of
memory, and an extraordinary facility of expression. He
would lie for hours in front of the fire with a volume before
him and a slice of bread and butter untasted in his hand.
His nurse declared that he talked "quite printed words," and
this we can readily believe on reading his reply, at the age of
four, to Lady Waldegrave's anxious question as to his feelings
when a servant at Strawberry Hill had spilt some hot coffee
over his legs— " Thank you, madam, the agony is abated."
He had, we are told, " a little plot of ground at the back of
the house, marked out as his own by a row of oyster shells,
which a maid one day threw away as rubbish. He went
straight to the drawing-room, where his mother was entertain-
ing some visitors, walked into the circle, and said very
solemnly, ' Cursed be Sally ; for it is written, Cursed is he
that removeth his neighbour's land-mark.' " While still a
mere boy he was already supplementing his school studies in
Greek and Latin by wide readings in modern European litera-
tures. Nor was he satisfied merely to absorb. He early
began to produce as well. Before he was eight he had com-
piled a Compendium of Universal History, in which, by the
way, Cromwell figures as "an unjust and wicked man"— a
judgment which may well strike us as amusing in the light
of its author's spirited vindication, some twenty years after-

1 Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord Macanlay (one volume
edition), p. 21.

INTRODUCTION ix

wards, of the Protector's career and character.1 He had
also written three cantos of a romance in verse, The Battle
of Cheviot, in imitation of Scott, whose Lay of the Last
Minstrel and Marmion he knew by heart. A little later
came other poems — one in twelve books of blank verse
called Fingal, and another, entitled Olaus Magnus, King
of Norway. That the boy was a prodigy was of course
clear to all who had anything to do with him. But his
mother's wisdom was specially shown in the fact that while
she encouraged him by judicious praise and criticism,
nothing in the shape of flattery was allowed to reach his
ear. "You will believe," she wrote to a friend, "that to
him we never appear to regard anything he does as any-
thing more than a school boy's amusement." The result
was that he grew up altogether unspoilt — a high-spirited,
good-tempered lad, "as playful as a kitten," according to
his mother's description, and devoted to his younger
brothers and sisters.

After six years of preparation at an excellent private school,
Macaulay at eighteen entered Trinity College, Cambridge.
His rooted dislike of mathematics prevented him from
attaining the highest University honours ; but he carried
off the prize for Latin declamation, and the Junior
Bachelor's prize for an essay on William III., while in two
successive years— 1819 and 1820— he gained the Chancellor's
medal for English verse. In 1824 he was elected to a
Trinity Fellowship of .£300 a year. These academic triumphs
were not, however, the only successes which marked his
college career. Already as an undergraduate he was fast
winning his reputation as one of the most remarkable talkers
of the day. The most brilliant member of a set of brilliant
young men, he not only held his hearers spell-bound round
the table, but also became a prominent figure in the Union
Debating Society. By this time he had also begun to make
a mark in literature. A year before he obtained his fellow-

1 See his essay on Hallam's Constitutional History of England.

x INTRODUCTION

ship he was among the contributors to Knight's Quarterly
Magazine, in which he published his poems, Ivry, The
Spanish Armada, and Naseby, his Fragments of a Roman
Tale and Scenes from the Athenian Revels, critical essays on
Dante and Petrarch, and, to please his father, an article
on West Indian slavery. But this was hardly more than
playing at authorship. His real opening came in 1825.
Francis Jeffrey, the celebrated critic, was just then on the
look-out for " some clever young man " who would help to
give fresh life to The Edinburgh Review, which he was still
editing, and which he felt to be sadly in need of new blood.
This " clever young man " he found in Macaulay, the first
of whose many contributions to the Edinburgh, an essay on
Milton, appeared in the August of that year. By it his
reputation as a writer was at once made. Though for the
taste of most readers to-day it is damaged by a too evident
straining after rhetorical effect (he himself afterwards said
that it was " over-loaded with gaudy and ungraceful orna-
ment "), it arrested the attention alike of the general public
and of the critics by its wonderful vigour and the sweep and
sparkle of its diction. " The more I think," wrote Jeffrey to
him in acknowledging the manuscript, "the less I can
conceive where you picked up that style."

In the meantime he had been reading for the Bar, to
which he was called in 1826. He did not, however, care for
the law ; he made little or no attempt to establish a practice ;
and the decisive success of his Milton naturally caused him
to look rather to his pen than to his nominal profession
for his means of support. It happened however that his
work in literature led to practical results which he had not
foreseen. He had been brought up a Tory, but at Cambridge
had gone over to the Whigs. Some of his articles attracted
the notice of the leaders of the Whig party, who were
anxious to discover promising recruits. In 1828 Lord
Lyndhurst appointed him a Commissioner in Bankruptcy.
Two years later Lord Lansdowne invited him to enter the

INTRODUCTION xi

House of Commons as member for what was then, in the
days before the Reform Bill, his lordship's pocket-borough
of Calne. This invitation Macaulay had no hesitation in
accepting, since from his youth up he had taken an interest
in politics almost if not quite as great as he had taken in
literature.

Much light is thrown upon his character by the fact that
in shaping his career during these critical years his first
thought was not for himself but for his family. Troubles
had fallen upon the Macaulay household. His father's
neglected business had gone to pieces, and all the financial
responsibility now rested upon the shoulders of Thomas
as the eldest son. He met the emergency with a fortitude
and cheerfulness worthy of the warmest admiration. So
straitened were his circumstances for a time that he was
even forced to sell his Cambridge gold medals. But he did
not murmur. He set his own personal hopes and prospects
altogether on one side. As his nephew and principal bio-
grapher says of him, " he quietly took up the burden which
his father was unable to bear ; and before many years had
elapsed the fortunes of all for whose welfare he considered
himself responsible were abundantly secured. In the
course of the efforts which he expended on the accomplish-
ment of this result, he unlearned the very notion of framing
his method of life with a view to his own pleasure ; and such
was his high and simple nature that it may well be doubted
whether it ever crossed his mind that to live wholly for
others was a sacrifice at all." ]

Macaulay took his seat in the House of Commons in
February, 1830, and on April 5 following, delivered his
maiden speech, which was in favour of the removal of the
civil disabilities under which the Jews then laboured. But
his great opportunity came the next year. The Whigs had
been returned to power pledged to carry a Reform Bill
which should include both an extension of the franchise and
1 Trevelyan, p. 92.

xii INTRODUCTION

a complete redistribution of seats. Into the support of this
bill Macaulay threw himself with characteristic ardour and
energy. By his first speech on the subject he electrified the
House and stepped at once into the front rank of parliament-
ary orators. " Whenever he rose to speak," said Gladstone,
" it was a summons like a trumpet call to fill the benches."
Nor were his speeches regarded only as brilliant oratorical
displays. They carried so much weight that the ablest
debaters on the other side were put up to reply to him.
Probably no one in the House counted more than he did in
the reform cause, and when on June 4, 1832, the bill
received the royal assent, his name as a statesman was
made. He was thereupon appointed one of the Commis-
sioners of the Board of Control which had general super-
vision of legislation in India ; entered the new parliament of
1833 as member for the important borough of Leeds, which
had been enfranchised by the Reform Bill ; and before the
end of that year was offered the post of legal adviser to the
Supreme Council of India. This position he accepted
mainly because the large salary attached to it would enable
him to give substantial help to his family and in the course
of a few years to lay by enough to make him financially
independent. At the same time it must not be forgotten
that he had a deep interest in India, and was inspired by an
earnest desire to do all that lay within his power to promote
its welfare. Accompanied by his sister Hannah, he sailed
for Madras on February 15, 1834.

These four years of public life had been years of enormous
and varied activity. His parliamentary duties had been
heavy, but they had been conscientiously discharged. His
official labours in connection with the Board of Control had
made large demands upon him, but he had done his work
faithfully and well. Meanwhile he had been caught up in
the whirl of social life. He had become one of the lions of
London's world of wit and fashion. Among the famous
talkers of a time when conversation was cultivated as an art,

INTRODUCTION xiii

he easily held his own. Especially at Holland House, then
the great metropolitan centre of intellectual society,1 he was
a frequent and favourite guest, and there he became intimate
with Tom Moore, and Campbell, with Samuel Rogers, and
Sydney Smith, and Sir James Mackintosh, and other men
of note in the literary circles of that day. One might well
have imagined that all these interests — parliamentary, official,
social — the strain of late sittings in the House, the drudgery
of routine work at his desk, the excitement of brilliant gather-
ings in which he was always one of the most conspicuous
figures — would have been more than enough to tax even his
marvellous strength and tireless energy. But all this time
he was still writing steadily for The Edinburgh Review.
When we now read his essays on Bunyan and Byron, on
Johnson, Horace Walpole, Burleigh, Chatham, and the War
of Succession in Spain, we are apt to think of them as the
work of a man whose whole business was literature, and who
was able to give undivided attention to the large subjects
with which he dealt. They were, on the contrary, produced
at a period when his life was so crowded with other interests
that only the narrowest margin could be spared for literary
undertakings. Most of them were in fact written between
five o'clock in the morning and breakfast-time. When these
circumstances are considered, it is certainly remarkable that
they maintain on the whole so uniform a level of excellence,
and that, whatever their defects may be, they exhibit so few
traces of haste or negligence either in their matter or in their
style.

Macaulay remained nearly four years in India, and during
the whole of that time he worked as hard as he had done in
England. In addition to the duties of his position on the
Supreme Council, which would have been enough to satisfy
most men, he voluntarily undertook the chairmanship of two
important committees — the Committee of Public Instruction
and the committee which had been appointed to prepare a

1 Compare the closing paragraph of his essay on Lord Holland.

xiv INTRODUCTION

Penal Code and a Code of Criminal Procedure. In both
these capacities he rendered great and lasting service to the
cause of civilisation in India. Two essays only— one on
Mackintosh's History of the Rebellion, the other on Bacon-
stand to the credit of this period. Such leisure as he could
find or make amid his multitudinous official labours he now
gave almost entirely to reading. He had, as I have said,
even as a child, an insatiable and almost undiscriminating
appetite for books. In manhood this appetite remained as
strong as ever. Reading was a positive passion with him.
He wrote home to one of his sisters that, had circumstances
permitted, he would have liked nothing so well as to bury
himself in some great library and never to pass a waking
hour without a book before him. He read everywhere — in
the train, on board ship, in London streets amid the rattle
of the traffic, in the solitude of country lanes. He read
everything he could lay his hands on, from the masterpieces
of the world's literature down to the most worthless novels
which he himself described as " trash." Malone, the Shake-
speare scholar, once found Dr Johnson, confined to his room,
immersed in a history of Birmingham. " Don't you find it
rather dull ? "- he ventured to ask. " Yes," Johnson replied,
"it is dull"; but dull as it was, it amused him because it
was a book. Anything in the form of a book in like manner
seemed to interest Macaulay. While his marvellous memory
enabled him to recall any passage of importance even from
a first perusal, he read the same volumes over and over again,
apparently from sheer delight in the mere process of read-
ing. The records of his omnivorous acquisitiveness fill us
with amazement. But as Mr Cotter Morison has well pointed
out, his love of reading was really " immoderate." He read
so much, so rapidly, and so constantly, that he scarcely had
time to assimilate or to reflect. Had he absorbed less and
thought more, his writings would have possessed more
originality and substance, and we should not have heard so
much of that charge of shallowness which is now so fre-

INTRODUCTION xv

quently, and, speaking generally, so justly, made against
him.

His personal object in going to India was attained, for
when in 1838 he returned to England, he brought with him,
as savings from his salary, a modest fortune, which was suffi-
cient to provide for his simple wants and tastes. Then, after
a short holiday in Italy, during which he collected much
topographical information which he put to use in his Lays of
Ancient Rome, he re-entered public life. He was elected
member of parliament for Edinburgh in 1839, and the
following year was given a seat in Lord Melbourne's cabinet
as Secretary for War. This position he held till the fall of
the Melbourne government in 1841. He remained active in
the House while his party was in opposition, speaking
frequently on questions which specially interested him, and
in 1846 again took office, under Lord John Russell, as Pay-
master General of the Forces. Defeated at the general
election of 1847, he was in 1852 once more returned for
Edinburgh, which he continued to represent till 1857, though,
for a reason which will become clear directly, he now ceased
to take any prominent part in debate. He was then raised
to the peerage under the title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley;
but though he took his seat in the House of Lords, he never
spoke there. His days of active politics were over.

His retirement from the scene of such long-continued and
memorable success caused him no regret. Ever since his
return from India he had indeed felt a growing anxiety to
escape from the strain of public affairs in order that he
might devote himself entirely to literary work. To that
work he had still given all the attention that his circum-
stances allowed. In 1842 he published his Lays of Ancient
Rome, a series of stirring ballads which, though they cannot
be described as great poetry, fully deserved the immense
popular vogue which they enjoyed by reason of their splendid
rendering of the spirit of antique patriotism and the dash
and vigour of their style. In 1843 he republished in volume

xvi INTRODUCTION

form the essays which he had thus far contributed to The
Edinburgh Review. Shortly afterwards he severed his long
connection with the Edinburgh that he might give the whole
of his available energy to the prosecution of an enormous
task which, first conceived before he left England for the
East, and continually set aside for other matters, had now
taken entire possession of his mind. The character and
scope of this undertaking are indicated in the opening
sentence : — " I purpose to write the history of England from
the accession of King James II. down to a time which is
within the memory of men still living." The leisure afforded
by his rejection at Edinburgh made rapid progress possible,
and the first two volumes of the History appeared in 1848,
instantly scoring a success far greater, it is said, than had
ever before attended the production of any purely historical
work. His re-election, which took place without any effort
on his part, was unfortunate, for he once more became
entangled in parliamentary affairs and many interruptions
necessarily resulted. But the third and fourth volumes were
ready by 1855, and were received with undiminished en-
thusiasm.

By this time, however, he had difficulties to contend with
far more serious than those entailed by outside interests. A
man of robust constitution and overflowing vitality, he had
never dreamed of husbanding his strength, and for many
years he had systematically overworked himself. A sudden
collapse of health occurred in 1852, when he was seized with
an illness which left him a victim of permanent heart-disease
and asthma. In one week, he himself declared, he "became
twenty years older." Henceforth life was completely changed
for him. He had to "fly on broken wing," to accept the
limitations of increasing invalidism, to economise his efforts,
to think twice of what he might in prudence venture to do
while formerly he had never had to think of himself at all.
Yet, though fully aware of the nature of his malady, and of
the constant danger of a fatal termination, he never lost his

INTRODUCTION xvii

cheerfulness or his courage, his keen interest in public
questions, his tender solicitude for those about him. It was
under such conditions that he now pushed on with his
History— "my task," as he calls it in his Diary; it was
under such conditions that the whole of the fourth volume,
and presently the fifth (published after his death) were
written. His chief desire was to accomplish all that he
could while sufficient strength remained. For some time he
had, to quote his own words, looked forward " to the inevit-
able close with perfect serenity"; conscious "that the last
scene of the play was approaching"; anxious "to act it
simply, but with fortitude and gentleness united." On his
last birthday — October 25, 1859 — he wrote in his Diary:
"Well, I have had a happy life." Two months later — on
December 28 — he died suddenly and painlessly. On
January 9, 1860, he was buried at the foot of the statue
of the man he had so much loved — Addison — in the Poet's
Corner in Westminster Abbey.

As even so brief a sketch of his life as we have here given
will suffice to show, Macaulay's moral character was one
which it is a pleasure and an inspiration to contemplate.
He was indeed a piece of sound and sterling manhood. The
complaint is made against him that as a writer he commonly
moves too much upon the plane of ordinary worldly morality ;
that he reveals little sympathy with those ideal aims and
aspirations which did not seem to him to lead directly to
practical results ; that his pages lack entirely the spiritual
glow and earnestness of men like Carlyle and Ruskin. The
charge is perfectly just. He is not for a moment to be
placed among the great religious and ethical teachers of his
generation. But whatever fault we may have to find with
Macaulay the philosopher, of Macaulay the man we can
only say with Mr Cotter Morison that "his action might put
the very saints to shame." Upright, unselfish, generous,
pure-minded, and courageous, he governed his conduct, alike
in his private relationships and in his public career, by the

xviii INTRODUCTION

highest principles of honour and integrity. As for his
private relationships, it is enough for us to remember that
he was a good son and one of the best of brothers. As for
his public career, two instances will suffice to prove his con-
scientiousness and magnanimity. When he was a very
young man, on the threshold of his political life, the Whig
government brought in a bill for the reform of the Bank-
ruptcy laws. Without hesitation, he voted for it though it
suppressed his own commissionership, upon which he was
then wholly dependent for the means of support. When in
India he made himself extremely unpopular among the
English residents in Calcutta by the introduction of what
are now recognised to have been certain wise changes in the
jurisdiction of the provincial courts of Bengal. At the very
moment when the local newspapers were busy attacking him
with the foulest abuse he stood out as the vigorous supporter
of the freedom of the press against which protests were
being made in other quarters. It is true that his life was so
uniformly prosperous that he was rarely brought to the test
of misfortune. We have, however, noted the cheerful courage
with which he took upon his own shoulders the financial
burden of his family, and the quiet fortitude with which he
bore the infirmities of his closing years and faced the thought
of death. Evidently Macaulay was a man who, had his life's
circumstances been other than they were, would have been a
hero in adversity. Nor must we ever forget that, quite as
much as misfortune, continued prosperity is a searching trial
of character. Few men have succeeded in all their under-
takings as Macaulay did ; few men have enjoyed so wide a
popularity. His fame, as Mr Morison puts it, "spread
through all classes and countries like an epidemic," and at
home and abroad he was the recipient of innumerable
honours. Yet to the end of his life he remained what he
was at the beginning — simple, true-hearted, wholly unspoilt.

INTRODUCTION xix

II
MACAULAY AS AN ESSAYIST

Macaulay's literary work consists, as we have seen, of his
unfinished History, the Lays of Ancient Rome and some
other poems, and his essays. It is with the last-named only
that we are here specially concerned. Including the five
biographies which, after he had ceased writing for the
Edinburgh, he contributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica,
these number forty-one. Their variety of subject-matter is
remarkable, for in them Macaulay ranges with easy con-
fidence over a very wide field of history, biography, politics,
and literature. Indeed, he had too much faith in his versa-
tility, for occasionally he undertook to discourse at large on
topics, like Bacon's philosophy, for the treatment of which he
had no adequate preparation. It is generally admitted that
he is on the whole at his best in the essays which deal with
English history and literature (but especially history) during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To this division,
it will be noted, our own essay on Clive belongs.

It is important to understand Macaulay's conception ot
the essay, which as a form of literature underwent great
expansion in his hands. Ostensibly, like other professional
critics of the time who wrote for the great reviews, he sets
out to adjudicate upon the merits of some particular book:
In a few cases, as for example in his examination of Southey's
Colloquies on Society and in his slashing onslaught on Robert
Montgomery's poems, he does actually confine himself to the
work in question. But his usual and characteristic method
is to take his nominal subject only as a point of departure:
He writes an introductory paragraph or two of general eulogy
or disapproval, and then, dismissing the book before him, he
proceeds at once to develop on his own account, often with-
out the slightest further reference to his supposed text, his
b

xx INTRODUCTION

own ideas on the matters suggested by it. Thus the essay on
Clive contains, not as we might have anticipated, a criticism
of Sir John Malcolm's volumes, the title of which is printed
at the head, but a biographical sketch which, but for the few
opening remarks, might just as well have stood by itself.
With Macaulay, in fact, an essay is a little treatise or dis-
sertation— a compact study of some person, or period, or
political problem. It is not to be supposed that he was
alone and wholly responsible for this transformation of the
old-fashioned, narrow, review-article. Carlyle, for instance,
in such essays as those on Burns and Voltaire, was at the
time of Macaulay's early writings independently breaking
ground in the same direction. But the immense popularity
of Macaulay made him the primary influence in the establish-
ment of this new kind of essay-writing.

Of such immense popularity the explanation is not far to
seek. It depended, and still depends (for despite much
adverse criticism it has undergone little abatement during
the half-century since Macaulay's death) upon a combination
of easily-recognised elements of which, while some are to
be classed as excellences of the highest order, there are
others of perhaps equal importance which have to be
reckoned among his limitations and defects. From an
examination of these we shall be able to learn something
of the chief outstanding features of Macaulay's work.

To begin with his positive qualities. Probably the first
thing that strikes us in reading him is that he has a
marvellous capacity for making everything he touches in-
teresting. History and criticism have too often been
couched in a dry and pedantic style, and when Macaulay
began to write dryness and pedantry were regarded as
almost inseparable from accuracy and thoroughness. No
matter what may be the subject in hand, Macaulay rarely
gives us a dull page. His animation is unbounded, his
energy never flags. Before the publication of the first
volumes of his History > he himself wrote of it : — " I shall

INTRODUCTION xxi

not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for
a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables
of young ladies." Carlyle, with his extraordinary faculty
for hitting the mark in a single incisive phrase, once wrote
to an invalid friend advising him to read " the last volume
of Macaulay's History or any other new novel." Whatever
expert criticism may have to say about the value of the
History as history, it cannot be denied that it possesses all,
the vitality and all the fascination of a great work of fiction.
The same genius for holding attention and sustaining in-
terest is apparent also in the essays. When Macaulay has
an argument to conduct, he shows himself a consummate
master of all the arts of exposition, controversy, persuasion,
appeal. As a mere story-teller he takes rank with our best?
In pictorial power — the power of vivid description — he has
few superiors even among the novelists themselves. The
past seems to unroll itself before him as a vast, picturesque,
moving panorama ; and under his graphic touch its scenes
and persons spring into life Moreover, he is one of the
clearest of writers. We never have to puzzle out his mean-
ing. As Professor Saintsbury has put it, short of being in
any degree an idiot, everyone can understand him without
difficulty.

In enumerating these various and striking merits we go
far, it is evident, to account for Macaulay's hold upon the
large, general reading public, which likes, beyond all things
else, vigour, vivacity, picturesqueness, and lucidity. But like
all writers, he has the defects of his qualities, and it is
impossible not to perceive that, as I have said, his popularity
was increased by some of his limitations and shortcomings.
Save for his exceptional endowment of genius, he was a
representative average Englishman of his generation, and
he certainly owed his success in no small measure to the
fact that he so well fitted in with and so eloquently expressed
the average man's attitude to the world. He is the very in-
carnation of the spirit of sound, sturdy common-sense. He

xxii INTRODUCTION

brings everything to the test of practical results: He is in-
tolerant of the vague, the visionary, the mystical. For him
" an acre in Middlesex is worth more than a principality in
Utopia." He seldom meddles with abstruse problems, and
treats philosophical speculation as a mere idle beating of the
air. A prosperous man, he takes a thoroughly comfortable
view of life. He is quite satisfied with the constitution of
the world ; he has unbounded faith in the " happy material-
ism " of his age ; he delights in its substantial conquests in the
field of visible and tangible things, while he shows not the
slightest interest in its scientific inquiries, its social theories,
its religious unrest. His prevailing buoyancy and optimism,
which we might at first feel inclined to set down to his credit,
we have to place rather on the other side of the account,
because they so manifestly arise from a certain narrowness
of outlook and a deficient sense of the pain and evil of life:
No troublesome question ever occurs to ruffle his com-
placency ; he is never " arrested by an intellectual difficulty
of any kind,''1 is never conscious of "the burden of the
mystery, the heavy and the weary weight of all this unin-
telligible world." He is confident, self-assertive, dogmatic —
as Lord Melbourne phrased it, he is " cock-sure of every-
thing." He knows his own mind, and he knows that he is
right ; and, as Mr Mark Pattison astutely remarked, " unin-
structed readers like this assurance, as they like a physician
who has no doubt of their case." Such men as Wordsworth
and Shelley, Carlyle and Ruskin, perpetually disturb us in the
midst of our preoccupation with material interests by their
insistence upon spiritual realities and their appeal to
standards which lie beyond the sphere of sense. Macaulay
brings us no such challenge; He is manly, honest, and sane.
But he leaves us on the whole too much contented with
ourselves and with things as they are.-

That we may read him with advantage it is necessary that,
while laying the fullest stress upon the great positive qualities
1 Cotter Morison, Macaulay, p. 50.

INTRODUCTION xxiii

already noted, we should keep clearly in mind the points at
which, as even his warmest admirers are now agreed, his
writings are most seriously open to criticism. Brilliant as
he always is, he is undeniably shallow. From the standpoint
of the expert and the scholar, his work has little value.
Laborious in preparation, painstaking in execution, he yet
made no real contribution to our knowledge of history. He
was a great populariser, not a great discoverer, nor in any
sense of the word a great thinker. " No original opinion re-
quiring patient consideration or delicate analysis," says one
of his critics, " is associated with the name of Macaulay.
He often generalised for himself with the utmost boldness^
but none of his original generalisations possess any import-
ance." ' Another writer brings the charge against him that
"he investigated no obscure questions, cleared up no diffi-
culties, reversed the opinion of scholars upon no important
point."2 His field was the external and the obvious. He
never takes us beneath the surface of things. His too
positive mind sees men and movements under a clear, white
light, and in describing them he knows nothing of those
half-tints, those reservations and qualifications, by which
alone it is often possible for us to approximate to the truth.
His judgments are too sweeping and emphatic to be always
sound. By his love of strong contrast, paradox, and
rhetorical effect, he is often led unwittingly to sacrifice the
finer shadings of character. He paints in black and white,
and omits the neutral tones. As a delineator of human
nature he therefore generally succeeds only when his subjects
are of the simple and elementary kind. " Complex and
involved characters, in which the good and evil were inter-
woven in odd and original ways, in which vulgar and obvious
faults and vices concealed deeper and rarer qualities beneath,
were beyond his ken."3 Hence his failure with men like

1 Minto, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 84.

2 Cotter Morison, Macaulay, p. 53.

3 Ibid. p. 83.

xxiv INTRODUCTION

Rousseau, Walpole, Byron, Boswell. The case of Boswell is
particularly interesting because we have here an opportunity
of comparing his work with that of a great contemporary,
Carlyle, who possessed in a pre-eminent degree that pene-
trative power — that ability to pierce through appearances to
the very heart of a man — which is precisely what Macaulay
lacked. Macaulay starts with the statement that Boswell
was " a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect," and then
he proceeds to develop his surprising paradox that "if he
had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great
writer." His portrait of Boswell is amazingly brilliant and
amusing. But it leaves us wholly unconvinced. It does not
in the least help us to understand how it was that this " great
fool " after all contrived to produce the acknowledged master-
piece of biographical literature. In fact we feel that Macaulay
has presented only Boswell's manifest weaknesses and ab-
surdities— the weaknesses and absurdities which it did not
need the eye of genius to detect, but which anyone might see
and laugh at — and that he has never for one moment brought
us into touch with the real Boswell at all. Then we turn to
Carlyle's portrait, and instantly the real Boswell becomes
apparent — a man of countless weaknesses and absurdities, it
is true, but with many characteristics of quite another sort
curiously intertangled with them. Carlyle perceives, and by
his searching yet sympathetic analysis he makes us perceive,
those other qualities of the man which wholly escaped
Macaulay's attention, and when we have carefully studied
the few pages which he devotes to him, we feel that we know
Boswell well enough to understand something at least of the
powers of brain and heart which went to the making of his
wonderful book.

Having now considered some of the salient features of
Macaulay's work on the side of matter and spirit, we must
give a little attention to his style and method of composition.

We have noted among his great merits his absolute
lucidity. He is, we have said, one of the clearest of writers.

INTRODUCTION xxv

" Not an ambiguous sentence," it has been asserted, " is to
be found throughout his work " ; and though this is, of
course, something of an exaggeration, it is in fact very
seldom that we have to read any passage of his a second
time to make sure of its meaning. The question therefore
arises how this remarkable clearness is attained ; and
fortunately it does not require any elaborate analysis of his
writings to provide an answer. It is attained, in the first
place, by mere clearness of thinking. If he never fumbles
with his material, if he is never vague or obscure in expres-
sion, it is, to begin with, because he always knows exactly
what he wants to say, and is a complete master of his facts
and ideas. Then, secondly, his clearness may be largely
traced to the structure of his sentences, which are generally
models of skilful arrangement and simplicity. Anyone who
studies a page out of any part of his works will soon realise
for himself how careful Macaulay is to avoid inversions,
cumbersome parentheses, entangling clauses, interjected
qualifications. The result is that we are never in the
slightest danger, as we read, of losing our grasp on his con-
struction. In his reaction against complexity he often indeed
goes to the other extreme, and his continual use of the very
short sentence — one of the most familiar of his character-
istics— sometimes degenerates into an irritating mannerism —
" Macaulay's snip-snap," as Brougham called it. At the
same time this mannerism, however objectionable, helps the
clearness and emphatic quality of his style. His vigilance
in the use of pronouns is also a point worthy of special
attention. Even the most painstaking writers are apt at
times to confuse the reader by the injudicious use of " he "
and " him," and " who " and " which " and " they." Macaulay
rarely makes the mistake of employing a pronoun instead of
a noun in places where the reference is in the least open to
doubt. It will be found that he often repeats the names of
persons ; but examination will show that this is not a trick,
and that when he does so, it is because the substitution of a

xxvi INTRODUCTION

pronoun would have introduced uncertainty into his meaning.
Finally, his clearness is in part due also to fulness of exposi-
tion. He does not merely throw out hints, and leave the
reader to work out an idea or draw a conclusion for himself.
He undertakes a complete explanation of his thought, in
which every important particular is dealt with explicitly and
in detail. He thus often runs into diffuseness ; but even this
diffuseness is an element in his lucidity. That every link in
his chain of reasoning may be understood, that his entire
meaning may be apprehended, he willingly takes the risk of
over-elaboration. For the same reason he often repeats the
same thought in various forms. In the essay on Clive, for
example, he sets out to prove (pp. 60-62) that honesty is the
best policy for nations as well as for individuals. The point
involves no difficulty, and we feel that it could have been
made very satisfactorily in half the space. But Macaulay is
not contented until, by adding sentence to sentence, he has
driven his argument well home upon the reader's mind.

This tendency to amplification and repetition suggests
another prominent characteristic of his work. It abounds
in illustrations. His prodigious memory is so richly stored
with facts that whatever may be the subject in hand it always
reminds him of something else. He delights in indicating
analogies and drawing parallels ; and such analogies and
parallels sometimes take him far afield. In his essay on
Addison, for instance, he has occasion, while dealing with
that writer's Latin poems, to refer to Boileau's theory that
" in the best modern Latin, a writer of the Augustan age
would have detected ludicrous improprieties." This view
he undertakes to support. And how does he do so? By
citing no fewer than three other cases, taken from three
different literatures, of somewhat similar improprieties
occurring where they were not to have been anticipated.
"What modern scholar can honestly declare that he sees
the smallest impurity in the style of Livy ? Yet, is it not
certain that, in the style 'of Livy, Pollio, whose taste had

INTRODUCTION xxvii

been formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected the in-
elegant idiom of the Po ? Has any modern scholar under-
stood Latin better than Frederick the Great understood
French ? Yet, is it not notorious that Frederick the Great,
after reading, speaking, writing French, and nothing but
French, during more than half-a-century, after unlearning
his mother tongue in order to learn French, after living
familiarly during many years with French associates, could
not, to the last, compose in French, without imminent risk of
committing some mistake which would have moved a smile
in the literary circles of Paris ? Do we believe that Erasmus
and Fracastorius wrote Latin as well as Dr Robertson and
Sir Walter Scott wrote English ? And are there not in the
Dissertation on India, the last of Dr Robertson's works, in
IVaverley, in Marmion, Scotticisms at which a London
apprentice would laugh ? " Macaulay's pages, as we soon
learn to our cost, are liberally sprinkled with the names of
people often quite unfamiliar to most of us, and with
allusions to incidents and books which only his own
marvellously erudite schoolboy could be expected to under-
stand ; for if he makes the smallest possible demand upon
our intelligence, on the other hand he makes enormous
demands upon our knowledge. From the essay on Clive,
the reference to "the Tenth Legion of Caesar" and "the
Old Guard of Napoleon" (p. 25) may be taken as one of
various examples of his habit of illustrating a point by
passing analogy ; while his sketch of the fall of the Carlo-
vingians (pp. 13, 14) sufficiently shows how his fondness for
instituting parallels occasionally tempts him into regular
digressions.

Another very noteworthy feature of Macaulay's method,
and one which helps to explain the graphic force of his
writings, is his love of the concrete. He has a wonderful
power of clothing abstract ideas in material imagery. He is
not satisfied to contend in general terms that " the smallest
actual good is better than the most magnificent promise of

xxviii INTRODUCTION

impossibilities." He clinches his argument by putting it
into the telling phrase, already quoted— "An acre in
Middlesex is worth a principality in Utopia." Even when
he is dealing with generalities, his descriptions take the
form of pictures to which substance and vividness are given
by the ample use of detail. He wishes us to realise Burke's
profound interest in everything connected with India, and he
writes:_«All India was present to the eye of his mind,
from the halls where suitors laid gold and perfumes at the
feet of sovereigns to the wild moor where the gipsy camp
was pitched, from the bazar, humming like a bee-hive with
the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the
lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare away
the hyaenas. He had just as lively an idea of the insurrection
at Benares as of Lord George Gordon's riots, and of the
execution of Nuncomar as of the execution of Dr Dodd.
Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing as
oppression in the streets of London."1 In the essay on
Clive we have an admirable example of the same concrete-
ness and the same wealth of picturesque detail in the de-
scription (pp. 94-96) of the Nabobs.

Finally, we must mention among Macaulay's chief
characteristics as a writer his prevailing tendency to ex-
aggeration. In his constant desire to gain effect he is
often guilty of over-loaded emphasis. He indulges freely
in contrast, and frequently puts it to excellent use; but,
as we see from the very first paragraph of the essay on
Clive, his contrasts are sometimes obtained at the expense
of strict accuracy. Moderation of statement is certainly not
among his many virtues. At times he does not seem to weigh
his words or measure his judgments, seeking rather for the
strongest possible expression. He says of Clarendon that
" no man ever laboured so hard to make himself despicable
and ridiculous " ; but in somewhat different phraseology he
says the same thing of Boswell, and evidently the statement
1 Essay on Warren Hastings.

INTRODUCTION xxix

cannot be true of both. His description of the massacre of
the Black Hole, in our own essay, is manifestly extravagant.
He is so afraid that we shall not realise the horror of the
incident that he writes of it in the superlative degree.1 His
epigrams are often amazingly neat and effective, as when for
example, he says of the Nabobs that " they raised the price
of everything in their neighbourhood, from fresh eggs to
rotten boroughs." But epigrammatic expression is not
always compatible with sober truth, and sometimes he seems
too willing to sacrifice the latter to the former. As an
epigram, the famous remark "The Puritan hated bear-
baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it
gave pleasure to the spectators," is undeniably clever and
pungent: Qualification would have spoilt it ; but then,
unfortunately for the epigram, it is only with a great deal
of qualification that it can be accepted, as Macaulay intends
that we shall accept it, as a description of the puritan
attitude to life.

It is a commonplace of criticism that "the style is of the
man." Macaulay's style — clear, animated, picturesque,
incisive, but hard, over- rhetorical, and wholly wanting in
the finer gradations of light and shade — is the natural
vehicle of his thought and an illuminating commentary upon
his mental character. He had essentially an oratorical cast
of mind, and both his merits and his defects are those of the
oratorical order. The measures of his prose, it has been well
aid, are " emphatically the measures of spoken deliverance."
He writes as if he were addressing an audience whose
attention he has to keep ; whom he has to interest, instruct,
ersuade, arouse, at once and on the spot ; who will have no
opportunity of going back to ponder on what he has said
and to re-consider its value in the quiet of their own minds.
Hence the uniform lucidity and sustained vigour of his
writings; his diffuseness and tendency to the excessive
elaboration even of the most ordinary ideas ; his love of
1 See note to p. 43, 11. 18-22.

xxx INTRODUCTION

contrast, paradox, and epigram ; and that habit of over-
emphasis by which he throws everything he touches into
the highest possible relief.

Ill

THE ESSAY ON CLIVE

The essay on Clive (first published in 1840) is one of the
best of Macaulay's writings. The biographical narrative is
bold and clear ; the historical details which form its back-
ground are managed with consummate skill ; and the
dramatic interest of its sudden crises and extraordinary
changes of fortune is brought out with wonderful effect.
In the story of Clive's epoch-making work in India Macaulay
had indeed a subject which appealed to him with peculiar
force, and with which he was in every way thoroughly
qualified to deal. It was a story of practical effort and
achievement ; of thrilling scenes enacted in the council
chamber and on the battle-field ; of brilliant success in the
sphere of material things. In the personality of his hero,
moreover, he found a combination of elements which it was
easy for him to understand. Clive was not one of those
complex and enigmatical characters for the full comprehension
of which a faculty of psychological discernment is requisite,
which, as we have seen, Macaulay did not possess. Both
his virtues and his failings were of the quite obvious and
intelligible kind. The picture which Macaulay paints of
him is therefore singularly clear and convincing. There
is much in him that he can admire and praise — firmness
of purpose, courage, promptitude, readiness in resource ;
the qualities of a born soldier and leader of men. But his
admiration does not mislead him, and his praise is marked
by due discrimination. He holds that Clive was one of the
greatest of Englishmen. But he frankly admits that he
"committed great faults." The moral questions which

INTRODUCTION xxxi

arise in connection with certain incidents of Clive's career
are not shirked by him, nor is anything said to minimise
their importance. On the contrary, they are handled
with much vigour and sagacity. On such plain ethical
issues as are here involved Macaulay speaks out without
fear and without favour. It is possible indeed that some
readers may not altogether share his sympathy with men
of this particular type. But, given his point of view, his
characterisation of Clive impresses us as thoroughly sound,
judicious, and satisfactory.

Considered merely as a biographical sketch the essay
therefore calls for little in the way of commentary or criticism.
It is however important that, in reading it, we should bear
in mind the fact that it is primarily a biographical sketch, and
thatsuch historical matter as is introduced into it,is introduced
only that Clive's career and exploits may be fully understood.
In other words, Clive is throughout kept at the centre of the
picture, and the great movements of Indian affairs are treated
in entire subordination to him. We have of course no right
to complain that, as he was writing biography and not
history, Macaulay should have adopted the usual method
of the biographer, and concentrated the interest upon his
hero. But we have always to remember that the result of
such method is to throw the historic picture a little bit out
of perspective. As a chapter in the annals of the English
conquest of India, our essay in fact needs to be supplemented
at many points by information derived from other sources.
Rather too much is ascribed directly to Clive's personal
genius and influence, and insufficient note is taken of the
various circumstances which co-operated with him, and
helped to render his labours successful. Events which lie
outside his story, but which none the less greatly favoured
the growth of the English power in India during the period
of his residence there — like Munro's victory at Buxar,1 and
the overthrow of the Mahrattas by the Afghans four years
1 See note to p. I, 1. 9.

xxxii INTRODUCTION

after Plassey — are passed over entirely ; while the larger
political forces at work at the time, even when they are
touched upon at all, are never presented in their full
significance.

Upon one point in particular, of the importance of which
we get no glimpse in our essay, the utmost stress has to be
laid. The struggle in India arose, as Macaulay clearly
shows, from the rivalry between the English and French
Companies in their attempts to obtain paramount influence
at the courts of the native princes. But though the scene of
struggle was thus localised and circumscribed, its issue
largely depended upon the general political conditions and
relationships of France and England, and especially upon
the settlement of the great question as to which of them was
to secure the command of the sea. The finances of France
were in a state of almost hopeless confusion ; Louis XV. and
his incompetent ministers were recklessly pursuing a war-
policy on the continent of Europe which entailed, among
other ruinous consequences, the sacrifice of French mercan-
tile and colonial interests ; the French navy was badly
administered, and as a result, the transmarine possessions
of France were powerless against the overwhelming naval
superiority of England.1 In the irregular conflict between
the English and French Companies, Dupleix had a tempor-
ary advantage, because it was confined to land ; as the two
nations were themselves at peace, "their fleets could not
take any part in it." But three years later, national hostilities
broke out, and then " the naval strength of England came
into play with decisive effect."2 The triumph of Clive at
Plassey by no means assured the permanent success of the
British. Immediately afterwards the French government
determined to drive them out of Southern India, and to this

1 Sir Alfred Lyall, The Rise of the British Dominion in India,

P- 95-

2 Ibid. p. 79.

INTRODUCTION xxxiii

end, Lally arrived at Pondicherry, in April 1758, with a land
force of 1200 men. But in two naval engagements the
French fleet received so much damage that the admiral had
to retire to the Isle of France to refit, and this superiority at
sea "proved for the English an effective set-off to the superi-
ority of the French by land. It rendered difficult Lally's
execution of the instructions of the French East India
Company to uproot the British settlements on the coast,"1
and these settlements, by providing valuable gateways for
both commercial and military use, practically provided the
British with the key to the situation. Ultimately the victory
was bound to go to the side which, by maintaining control
of the sea, was able to keep open communication between
India and the home-country, and thus on occasion to ensure
all the reinforcements that might be required. This supreme
advantage was now possessed by the English ; and with the
gaining of it Clive himself had of course really nothing to do.
Great, therefore, as was the work accomplished by him, the
historian has still to acknowledge that it could never have
been done save for many favouring circumstances which he
indeed turned to the fullest service, but which he did not
create.

1 Political History of England, Vol. IX. p. 474.

LORD CLIVE

(January 1840)

The Life of Robert Lord Clive ; collected from the Family Papers^
coihmtmicatedby the Earl of Powis. By MAJOR-GENERAL SIR
JOHN MALCOLM, K.C.B. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1836.

WE have always thought it strange that, while the
history of the Spanish empire in America is familiarly
known to all the nations of Europe, the great actions
of our countrymen in the East should, even among
ourselves, excite little interest. Every schoolboy 5
knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who strangled
Atahualpa. But we doubt whether one in ten, even
among English gentlemen of highly cultivated minds,
can tell who won the battle of Buxar, who perpetrated
the massacre of Patna, whether Sujah Dowlah ruled in 10
Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a Hindoo
or a Mussulman. Yet the victories of Cortes were
gained over savages who had no letters, who were
ignorant of the use of metals, who had not broken in
a single animal to labour, who wielded no better weapons 15
than those which could be made out of sticks, flints,
and fish-bones, who regarded a horse-soldier as a
monster, half man and half beast, who took a harque-
busier for a sorcerer, able to scatter the thunder and

A I

2 ESSAY ON CLIVE

lightning of the skies. The people of India, when
we subdued them, were ten times as numerous as the
Americans whom the Spaniards vanquished, and were
at the same time quite as highly civilised as the victorious
5 Spaniards. They had reared cities larger and fairer
than Saragossa or Toledo, and buildings more beautiful
and costly than the cathedral of Seville. They could
show bankers richer than the richest firms of Barcelona
or Cadiz, viceroys whose splendour far surpassed that

10 of Ferdinand the Catholic, myriads of cavalry and long
trains of artillery which would have astonished the
Great Captain. It might have been expected, that
every Englishman who takes any interest in any part of
history would be curious to know how a handful of his

15 countrymen, separated from their home by an immense
ocean, subjugated, in the course of a few years, one of
the greatest empires in the world. Yet, unless we
greatly err, this subject is, to most readers, not only
insipid, but positively distasteful.

20 Perhaps the fault lies partly with the historians.
Mr Mill's book, though it has undoubtedly great and
rare merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque
to attract those who read for amusement. Orme,
inferior to no English historian in style and power of

25 painting, is minute even to tediousness. In one volume
he allots, on an average, a closely printed quarto page
to the events of every forty-eight hours. The con-
sequence is, that his narrative, though one of the most
authentic and one of the most finely written in our

30 language, has never been very popular, and is now
scarcely ever read.

ESSAY ON CLIVE 3

We fear that the volumes before us will not much
attract those readers whom Orme and Mill have repelled.
The materials placed at the disposal of Sir John Malcolm
by the late Lord Powis were indeed of great value. But
we cannot say that they have been very skilfully worked 5
up. It would, however, be unjust to criticise with severity
a work which, if the author had lived to complete and
revise it, would probably have been improved by
condensation and by a better arrangement. We are
more disposed to perform the pleasing duty of express- 10
ing our gratitude to the noble family to which the public
owes so much useful and curious information.

The effect of the book, even when we make the largest
allowance for the partiality of those who have furnished
and of those who have digested the materials, is, on the 15
whole, greatly to raise the character of Lord Clive.
We are far indeed from sympathising with Sir John
Malcolm, whose love passes the love of biographers,
and who can see nothing but wisdom and justice in the
actions of his idol. But we are at least equally far from 20
concurring in the severe judgment of Mr Mill, who
seems to us to show less discriminatiQ n in his account
of Clive than in any other part of his valuable work.
Clive, like most men who are born with strong passions
and tried by strong temptations, committed great faults. 25
But every person who takes a fair and enlightened view
of his whole career must admit that our island, so fertile
in heroes and statesmen, has scarcely ever produced
a man more truly great either in arms or in council.

The Clives had been settled, ever since the twelfth 30
century, on an estate of no great value, near Market-

4 ESSAY ON CLIVE

Drayton, in Shropshire. In the reign of George the
First this moderate but ancient inheritance was possessed
by Mr Richard Clive, who seems to have been a plain
man of no great tact or capacity. He had been bred to

5 the law, and divided his time between professional business
and the avocations of a small proprietor. He married
a lady frorrTManchester, of the name of Gaskill, and
became the father of a very numerous family. His
eldest son, Robert, the founder of the British empire

10 in India, was born at the old seat of his ancestors on
the twenty-ninth of September, 1725.

Some lineaments of the character of the man were
early discerned in the child. There remain letters written
by his relations when he was in his seventh year; and

15 from these letters it appears that, even at that early age,
his strong will and his fiery passions, sustained by a con-
stitutional intrepidity which sometimes seemed hardly
compatible with soundness of mind, had begun to cause
great uneasiness to his family. " Fighting," says one of

20 his uncles, "to which he is out of measure addicted,
gives his temper such a fierceness and imperiousness,
that he flies out on every trifling occasion." The old
people of the neighbourhood still remember to have
heard from their parents how Bob Clive climbed to the

25 top of the lofty steeple of Market-Dray ton, and with
what terror the inhabitants saw him seated on a stone
spout near the summit. They also relate how he formed
all the idle lads of the town into a kind of predatory.,
army, and compelled the shopkeepers to submit to a

30 tribute of apples and half-pence, in consideration of which
he guaranteed the security of their windows. He was

ESSAY ON CLIVE 5

sent from school to school, making very little progress
in his learning, and gaining for himself everywhere the
character of an exceedingly naughty boy. One of his
masters, it is said, was sagacious enough to prophesy
that the idle lad would make a great figure in the world. 5
But the general opinion seems to have been that poor
Robert was a dunce, if not a reprobate. His family ex-
pected nothing good from such slender parts and such
a headstrong temper. It is not strange therefore, that
they gladly accepted for him, when he was in his 10
eighteenth year, a writership in the service of the East
India Company, and shipped him off to make a fortune
or to die of a fever at Madras.

Far different were the prospects of Clive from those
of the youths whom the East India College now annu- 15
ally sends to the Presidencies of our Asiatic empire.
The Company was then purely a trading corporation.
Its territory consisted of a few square miles, for which
rent was paid to the native governments. Its troops
were scarcely numerous enough to man the batteries of 20
three or four ill-constructed forts, which had been erected
for the protection of the warehouses. The natives, who
composed a considerable part of these little garrisons,
had not yet been trained in the discipline of Europe,
and were armed, some with swords and shields, some 25
with bows and arrows. The business of the servant of
the Company was not, as now, to conduct the judicial,
financial, and diplomatic business of a great country,
but to take stock", to~rnake advances to weavers, to ship
cargoes, and above all to keep an eye on private traders 30
who dared to infringe the monopoly. The younger

6 ESSAY ON CLIVE

clerks were so miserably paid that they could scarcely
subsist without incurring debt ; the elder enriched them-
selves by trading on their own account ; and those who
lived to rise to the top of the service often accumulated
5 considerable fortunes.

Madras, to which Clive had been appointed, was, at
this time, perhaps, the first in importance of the Com-
pany's settlements. In the preceding century Fort St
George had arisen on a barren spot beaten by a raging

10 surf; and in the neighbourhood a town, inhabited by
many thousands of natives, had sprung up, as towns
spring up in the East, with the rapidity of the prophet's
gourd. There were already in the suburbs many white
villas, each surrounded by its garden, whither the wealthy

15 agents of the Company retired, after the labours of the
desk and the warehouse, to enjoy the cool breeze which
springs up at sunset from the Bay of Bengal. The
habits of these mercantile grandees appear to have been
more profuse, luxurious, and ostentatious, than those of

20 the high judicial and political functionaries who have
succeeded them. But comfort was far less under-
stood. Many devices which now mitigate the heat of
the climate, preserve health, and prolong life, were
unknown. There was far less intercourse with Europe

25 than at present. The voyage by the Cape, which in
our time has often been performed within three months,
was then very seldom accomplished in six, and was
sometimes protracted to more than a year. Con-
sequently, the Anglo-Indian was then much more

30 estranged from his country, much more addicted to
Oriental usages, and much less fitted to mix in society

ESSAY ON CLIVE 7

after his return to Europe, than the Anglo-Indian of the
present day.

Within the fort and its precinct, the English exercised,
by permission of the native government, an extensive
authority, such as every great Indian landowner exercised 5
within his own domain. But they had never dreamed
of claiming independent power. The surrounding
country was ruled by the Nabob of the Carnatic, a
deputy of the Viceroy of the Deccan commonly called
the Nizam, who was himself only a deputy of the mighty 10
prince designated by our ancestors as the Great Mogul.
Those names, once so august and formidable, still
remain. There is still a Nabob of the Carnatic, who lives
on a pension allowed to him by the English out of the
revenues of the provinces which his ancestors ruled. 15
There is still a Nizam, whose capital is overawed by a
British cajjjanjBant, and to whom a British resident
gives, under the name of advice, commands which are
not to be disputed. There is still a Mogul, who is per-
mitted to play at holding courts and receiving petitions, 20
but who has less power to help or hurt than the youngest
civil servant of the Company.

dive's voyage was unusually tedious even for that age.
The ship remained some months at the Brazils, where
the young adventurer picked up some knowledge of 25
Portuguese, and spent all his pocket-money. He did
not arrive in India till more than a year after he had
left England. His situation at Madras was most painful.
His funds were exhausted. His pay was small. He had
contracted debts. He was wretchedly lodged, no small 30
calamity in a climate which can be made tolerable to an

8 ESSAY ON CLIVE

European only by spacious and well-placed apartments.
He had been furnished with letters of recommendation
to a gentleman who might have assisted him ; but when
he landed at Fort St George he found that this gentleman
5 had sailed for England. The lad's shy and haughty
disposition withheld him from introducing himself to
strangers. He was several months in India before he
became acquainted with a single family. The climate
affected his health and spirits. His duties were of a

10 kind ill-suited to his ardent and daring character. He
pined for his home, and in his letters to his relations
expressed his feelings in language softer and more
pensive than we should have expected either from the
waywardness of his boyhood, or from the inflexible

15 sternness of his later years. " I have not enjoyed," says
he, "one happy day since I left my native country";
and again, " I must confess, at intervals, when I think
of my dear native England, it affects me in a very
peculiar manner. ... If I should be so far blest as to

20 revisit again my own country, but more especially Man-
chester, the centre of all my wishes, all that I could
hope or desire for would be presented before me in one
view."

One solace he found of the most respectable kind.

25 The Governor possessed a good library, and permitted
Clive to have access to it. The young man devoted
much of his leisure to reading, and acquired at this time
almost all the knowledge of books that he ever possessed.
As a boy he had been too idle, as a man he soon became

30 too busy, for literary pursuits.

But neither climate nor poverty, neither study nor the

ESSAY ON CLIVE 9

sorrows of a home-sick exile, could tame the desperate
audacity of his spirit. He behaved to his official
superiors as he had behaved to his schoolmasters, and
he was several times in danger of losing his situation.
Twice, while residing in the Writers' Buildings, he at- 5
tempted to destroy himself; and twice the pistol which
he snapped at his own head failed to go off. This
circumstance, it is said, affected him as a similar escape
affected Wallenstein. After satisfying himself that the
pistol was really well loaded, he burst forth into an 10
exclamation that surely he was reserved for something
great.

About this time an event which at first seemed likely
to destroy all his hopes in life suddenly opened before
him a new path to eminence. Europe had been, during 15
some years, distracted by the war of the Austrian
succession. George the Second was the steady ally
of Maria Theresa. The house of Bourbon took the
opposite side. Though England was even then the
first of maritime powers, she was not, as she has since 20
become, more than a match on the sea for all the
nations of the world together ; and she found it difficult
to maintain a contest against the united navies of France
and Spain. In the eastern seas France obtained the
ascendancy. Labourdonnais, governor of Mauritius, 25
a man of eminent talents and virtues, conducted an
expedition to the continent of India in spite of the
opposition of the British fleet, landed, assembled an
army, appeared before Madras, and compelled the town
and fort to capitulate. The keys were delivered up ; 30
the French colours were displayed on Fort St George ;

io ESSAY ON CLIVE

and the contents of the Company's warehouses were
seized as prize of war by the conquerors. It was stipu-
lated by the capitulation that the English inhabitants
should be prisoners of war on parole, and that the town
5 should remain in the hands of the French till it should
be ransomed. Labourdonnais pledged his honour that
only a moderate ransom should be required.

But the success of Labourdonnais had awakened the
jealousy of his countryman, Dupleix, governor of Pondi-

10 cherry. Dupleix, moreover, had already begun to
revolve gigantic schemes, with which the restoration of
Madras to the English was by no means cojrrgatible.
He declared that Labourdonnais had gone beyond his
powers; that conquests made by the French arms on

15 the continent of India were at the disposal of the
governor of Pondicherry alone ; and that Madras should
be razed to the ground. Labourdonnais was compelled
to yield. The anger which the breach of the capitula-
tion excited among the English was increased by the

20 ungenerous manner in which Dupleix treated the
principal servants of the Company. The Governor and
several of the first gentlemen of Fort St George were
carried under a guard to Pondicherry, and conducted
through the town in a triumphal procession under the

25 eyes of fifty thousand spectators. It was with reason
thought that this gross vjpjation^ of public faith absolved
the inhabitants of Madras from the engagements into
which they had entered with Labourdonnais. Clive fled
from the town by night in the disguise of a Mussulman,

30 and took refuge at Fort St David, one of the small
English settlements subordinate to Madras.

ESSAY ON CLIVE n

The circumstances in which he was now placed
naturally led him to adopt a profession better suited to
his restless and intrepijLspirit than the business of ex-
amining packages and casting accounts. He solicited
and obtained an ensign's commission in the service of 5
the Company, and at twenty-one entered on his military
career. His personal courage, of which he had, while
still a writer, given signal proof by a desperate duel
with a military bully who was the terror of Fort St
David, speedily made him conspicuous even among 10
hundreds of brave men. He soon began to show in
his new calling other qualities which had not before
been discerned in him, judgment, sagacity, deference to
legitimate authority. He distinguished himself highly
in several operations against the French, and was 15
particularly noticed by Major Lawrence, who was then
considered as the ablest British officer in India.

Clive had been only a few months in the army when
intelligence arrived that peace had been concluded
between Great Britain and France. Dupleix was in 20
consequence compelled to restore Madras to the
English Company ; and the young ensign was at liberty
to resume his former business. He did indeed return
for a short time to his desk. He again quitted it in
order to assist Major Lawrence in some petty hostilities 25
with the natives, and then again returned to it. While
he was thus wavering between a military and a com-
mercial life, events took place which decided his choice.
The politics of India assumed a new aspect. There
was peace between the English and French Crowns ; 30
but there arose between the English and French Com-

12 ESSAY ON CLIVE

panics trading to the East a war most eventful and im-
portant, a war in which the prize was nothing less than
the magnificent inheritance of the house of Tamerlane.

The empire which Baber and his Moguls reared in
5 the sixteenth century was long one of the most extensive
and splendid in the world. In no European kingdom
was so large a population subject to a single prince, or
so large a revenue poured into the treasury. The
beauty and magnificence of the buildings erected by

10 the sovereigns of Hindostan amazed even travellers
who had seen St Peter's. The innumerable retinues
and gorgeous decorations which surrounded the throne
of Delhi dazzled even eyes which were accustomed to
the pomp of Versailles. Some of the great viceroys

15 who held their posts by virtue of commissions from the
Mogul ruled as many subjects as the King of France or
the Emperor of Germany. Even the deputies of these
deputies might well rank, as to extent of territory and
amount of revenue, with the Grand Duke of Tuscany,

20 or the Elector of Saxony.

There can be little doubt that this great empire,
powerful and prosperous as it appears on a superficial
view, was yet, even in its best days, far worse governed
than the worst governed parts of Europe now are.

25 The administration was tainted with all the vices of
Oriental despotism, and with all the vices inseparable
from the domination of race over race. The conflict-
ing pretensions of the princes of the royal house pro-
duced a long series of crimes and public disasters.

30 Ambitious lieutenants of the sovereign sometimes
aspired to independence. Fierce tribes of Hindoos,

ESSAY ON CLIVE 13

impatient of a foreign yoke, frequently withheld tribute,
repelled the armies of the government from the
mountain fastnesseSj and poured down in arms on the
cultivated plains. In spite, however, of much constant
maladministration, in spite of occasional convulsions 5
which shook the whole frame of society, this great
monarchy, on the whole, retained, during some genera-
tions, an outward appearance of unity, majesty, and
energy. But, throughout the long reign of Aurungzebe,
the state, notwithstanding all that the vigour and policy 10
of the prince could effect, was hastening to dissolution.
After his death, which took place in the year 1707, the"
ruin was fearfully rapid. Violent shocks from without
co-operated with an incurable decay which was fast
proceeding within; and in a few years the empire had 15
undergone utter decomposition.

The history of the successors of Theodosius bears no
small analogy to that of the successors of Aurungzebe.
But perhaps the fall of the Carlovingians furnishes the
nearest parallel to the fall of the Moguls. Charlemagne 20
was scarcely interred when the imbecility^and the dis-
putes of his descendants began to bring contempt on
themselves and destruction on their subjects. The
wide dominion of the Franks was severed into a
thousand pieces. Nothing more than a nominal 25
dignity was left to the abject heirs of an illustrious
name, Charles the Bald, and Charles the Fat, and
Charles the Simple. Fierce invaders, differing from
each other in race, language, and religion, flocked, as if
by concert, from the farthest corners of the earth, to 30
plunder provinces which the government could no

longer defend. The pirates of the Northern Sea ex-
tended their ravages from the Elbe to the Pyrenees,
and at length fixed their seat in the rich valley of the
Seine. The Hungarian, in whom the trembling monks
5 fancied that they recognised the Gog or Magog of
prophecy, carried back the plunder of the cities of
Lombardy to the depths of the Pannonian forests.
The Saracen ruled in Sicily, desolated the fertile plains
of Campania, and spread terror even to the walls of

10 Rome. In the midst of these sufferings, a great internal
change passed upon the empire. The corruption of
death began to ferment into new forms of life. While
the great body, as a whole, was torpid and passive,
every separate member began to feel with a sense and

15 to move with an energy all its own. Just here, in the
most barren and dreary tract of European history, all
feudal privileges, all modern nobility, take their source.
It is to this point, that we trace the power of those
princes who, nominally vassals, but really independent,

20 long governed, with the titles of dukes, marquesses, and
counts, almost every part of the dominions which had
obeyed Charlemagne.

Such or nearly such was the change which passed on
the Mogul empire during the forty years which followed

25 the death of Aurungzebe. A succession of nominal
sovereigns, sunk in indolence and debauchery, sauntered
away life in secluded palaces, chewing bang, fondling
concubines, and listening to buffoons. A~ "succession
of ferocious invaders descended through the western

30 passes, to prey on the defenceless wealth of Hindostan.
A Persian conqueror crossed the Indus, marched through

ESSAY ON CLIVE 15

the gates of Delhi, and bore away in triumph those
treasures of which the magnificence had astounded
Roe and Bernier, the Peacock Throne, on which the
richest jewels of Golconda had been disposed by the
most skilful hands of Europe, and the inestimable 5
Mountain of Light, which, after many strange vicis-
situdes, lately shone in the bracelet of Runjeet Sing,
and is now destined to adorn the hideous idol of Orissa.
The Afghan soon followed to complete the work of
devastation which the Persian had begun. The warlike 10
tribes of Rajpootana threw off the Mussulman yoke.
A band of mercenary soldiers occupied Rohilcund.
The Seiks ruled on the Indus. The Jauts spread
dismay along the Jumna. The highlands which border
on the western sea-coast of India poured forth a yet 15
more formidable race, a race which was long the terror
of every native power, and which, after many desperate
and doubtful struggles, yielded only to the fortune and
genius of England. It was under the reign of Aurung-
zebe that this wild clan of plunderers first descended 20
from their mountains; and soon after his death, every
corner of his wide empire learned to tremble at the
mighty name of the Mahrattas. Many fertile vice-
royalties were entirely subdued by them. Their
dominions stretched across the peninsula from sea to 25
sea. Mahratta captains reigned at Poonah, at Gualior,
in Guzerat, in Berar, and in Tanjore. Nor did they,
though they had become great sovereigns, therefore
cease to be freebooters. They still retained the predatory
habits of their forefathers. Every region which"was not 30
subject to their rule was wasted by their incursions.

16

Wherever their kettle-drums were heard, the peasant
threw his bag of rice on his shoulder, hid his small savings
in his girdle, and fled with his wife and children to the
mountains or the jungles, to the milder neighbourhood
5 of the hyaena and the tiger. Many provinces redeemed
their harvests by the payment of an annual ransom.
Even the wretched phantom who still bore the imperial
title stooped to pay this ignominious, -blackmail. The
camp-fires of one rapacious leader were seen from the

10 walls of the palace of Delhi. Another, at the head
of his innumerable cavalry, descended year after year
on the rice-fields of Bengal. Even the European factors
trembled for their magazines. Less than a hundred
years ago, it was thought necessary to fortify Calcutta

15 against the horsemen of Berar, and the name of the

Mahratta ditch still preserves the memory of the danger.

Wherever the viceroys of the Mogul retained authority

they became sovereigns. They might still acknowledge

in words the superiority of the house of Tamerlane ; as

20 a Count of Flanders or a Duke of Burgundy might have
acknowledged the superiority of the most helpless
driveller among the later Carlovingians. They might
occasionally send to their titular sovereign a compli-
mentary present, or solicit from him a title of honour.

25 In truth, however, they were no longer lieutenants re-
movable at pleasure, but independent hereditary princes.
In this way originated those great Mussulman houses
which formerly ruled Bengal and the Carnatic, and those
which still, though in a state of vassalage^, exercise some

30 of the powers of royalty at Lucknow and Hyderabad.
In what was this confusion to end? Was the strife

ESSAY ON CLIVE 17

to continue during centuries? Was it to terminate in
the rise of another great monarchy ? Was the Mussul-
man or the Mahratta to be the Lord of India ? Was
another Baber to descend from the mountains, and to
lead the hardy tribes of Cabul and Chorasan against 5
a wealthier and less warlike race ? None of these events
seemed improbable. But scarcely any man, however
sagacious, would have thought it possible that a trading
company, separated from India by fifteen thousand miles
of sea, and possessing in India only a few acres for 10
purposes of commerce, would, in less than a hundred
years, spread its empire from Cape Comorin to the
eternal snow of the Himalayas ; would compel Mahratta
and Mahommedan to forget their mutual feuds in
common subjection; would tame down even those wild 15
races which had resisted the most powerful of the
Moguls ; and, having united under its laws a hundred
millions of subjects, would carry its victorious arms
far to the east of the Burrampooter, and far to the west
of the Hydaspes, dictate terms of peace at the gates of 20
Ava, and seat its vassal on the throne of Candahar.

The man who first saw that it was possible to found
an European empire on the ruins of the Mogul monarchy
was Dupleix. His restless, capacious, and inventive
mind had formed this scheme, at a time when the ablest 25
servants of the English Company were busied only about
invoices and bills of lading. Nor had he only proposed
to himself the end. He had also a just and distinct
view of the means by which it was to be attained. He
clearly saw that the greatest force which the princes of 30
India could bring into the field would be no match for

1 8 ESSAY ON CLIVE

a small body of men trained in the discipline, and guided
by the tactics, of the West. He saw also that the natives
of India might, under European commanders, be formed
into armies, such as Saxe or Frederic would be proud to
5 command. He was perfectly aware that the most easy
and convenient way in which an European adventurer
could exercise sovereignty in India, was to govern the
motions, and to speak through the mouth of some glitter-
ing puppet dignified by the title of Nabob or Nizam.

10 The arts both of war and policy, which a few years later
were employed with such signal success by the English,
were first understood and practised by this ingenious and
aspiring Frenchman.

The situation of India was such that scarcely any

15 aggression could be without a pretext, either in old laws
or in recent practice. All rights were in a state of utter
uncertainty; and the Europeans who took part in the
disputes of the natives confounded the confusion, by
applying to Asiatic politics the public law of the West,

20 and analogies drawn from the feudal system. If it was
convenient to treat a Nabob as an independent prince,
there was an excellent plea for doing so. He was inde-
pendent in fact. If it was convenient to treat him as a
mere deputy of the Court of Delhi, there was no diffi-

25 culty ; for he was so in theory. If it was convenient to
consider his office as an hereditary dignity, or as a dig-
nity held during life only, or as a dignity held only
during the good pleasure of the Mogul, arguments and
precedents might be found for every one of those views.

30 The party who had the heir of Baber in their hands,
represented him as the undoubted, the legitimate, the

ESSAY ON CLIVE 19

absolute sovereign, whom all subordinate authorities
were bound to obey. The party against whom his name
was used did not want plausible pretexts for maintaining
that the empire was in fact dissolved, and that though it
might be decent to treat the Mogul with respect, as a 5
venerable relic of an order of things which has passed
away, it was absurd to regard him as the real master of
Hindostan.

In the year 1748, died one of the most powerful of
the new masters of India, the great Nizam al Mulk, 10
Viceroy of the Deccan. His authority descended to his
son, Nazir Jung. Of the provinces subject to this high
functionary, the Carnatic was the wealthiest and the most
extensive. It was governed by an ancient Nabob, whose
name the English corrupted into Anaverdy Khan. 15

But there were pretenders to the government both of
the viceroyalty and of the subordinate province. Mirza-
pha Jung, a grandson of Nizam al Mulk, appeared as the
competitor of Nazir Jung. Chunda Sahib, son-in-law
of a former Nabob of the Carnatic, disputed the title of 20
Anaverdy Khan. In the unsettled state of Indian law
it was easy for both Mirzapha Jung and Chunda Sahib
to make out something like a claim of right. In a
society altogether disorganised, they had no difficulty
in finding greedy advepturers to follow their standards. 25
They united their interests, invaded the Carnatic, and
applied for assistance to the French, whose fame had
been raised by their success against the English in the
recent war on the coast of Coromandel.

Nothing could have happened more pleasing to the 30
subtle and ambitious Dupleix. To make a Nabob of

20 ESSAY ON CLIVE

the Carnatic, to make a Viceroy of the Deccan, to rule
under their names the whole of Southern India; this
was indeed an attractive prospect. He allied himself
with the pretenders, and sent four hundred French
5 soldiers, and two thousand sepoys, disciplined after the
European fashion, to the assistance of his confederates.
A battle was fought. The French distinguished them-
selves greatly. Anaverdy Khan was defeated and slain.
His son, Mahommed Ali, who was afterwards well known
10 in England as the Nabob of Arcot, and who owes to the
eloquence of Burke a most unenviable immortality, fled
with a scanty remnant of his army to Trichinopoly ; and
the conquerors became at once masters of almost every
part of the Carnatic.

1 5 This was but the beginning of the greatness of Dupleix.

After some months of fighting, negotiation and intrigue,

his ability and good fortune seemed to have prevailed

everywhere. Nazir Jung perished by the hands of his

own followers ; Mirzapha Jung was master of the

20 Deccan ; and the triumph of French arms and French

policy was complete. At Pondicherry all was exultation

and festivity. Salutes were fired from the batteries, and

Te Deum sung in the churches. The new Nizam came

thither to visit his allies ; and the ceremony of his in-

25 stallation was performed there with great pomp. Dupleix,

dressed in the garb worn by Mahommedans of the

highest rank, entered the town in the same palanquin

with the Nizam, and, in the pageant which followed,

took precedence of all the court. He was declared

30 Governor of India from the river Kristna to Cape

Comorin, a country about as large as France, with

ESSAY ON CLIVE 21

authority superior even to that of Chunda Sahib. He
was intrusted with the command of seven thousand
cavalry. It was announced that no mint would be
suffered to exist in the Carnatic except that at Pondi-
cherry. A large portion of the treasures which former 5
Viceroys of the Deccan had accumulated had found its
way into the coffers of the French governor. It was
rumoured that he had received two hundred thousand
pounds sterling in money, besides many valuable jewels.
In fact, there could scarcely be any limit to his gains. 10
He now ruled thirty millions of people with almost
absolute power. No honour or emolument could be
obtained from the government but by his intervention.
No petition, unless signed by him, was perused by the
Nizam. 15

Mirzapha Jung survived his elevation only a few
months. But another prince of the same house was
raised to the throne by French influence, and ratified
all the promises of his predecessor. Dupleix was now
the greatest potentate in India. His countrymen 20
boasted that his name was mentioned with awe even in
the chambers of the palace of Delhi. The native popu-
lation looked with amazement on the progress which, in
the short space of four years, an European adventurer
had made towards dominion in Asia. Nor was the 25
vainglorious Frenchman content with the reality of
power. He loved to display his greatness with arrogant
ostentation before the eyes of his subjects and of his
rivals. Near the spot where his policy had obtained its
chief triumph, by the fall of Nazir Jung, and the eleva- 30
tion of Mirzapha, he determined to erect a column, on

22 ESSAY ON CLIVE

the four sides of which four pompous inscriptions, in
four languages, should proclaim his glory to all the
nations of the East. Medals stamped with emblems of
his successes were buried beneath the foundations of this
5 stately pillar, and round it arose a town bearing the
haughty name of Dupleix Fatihabad, which is, being
interpreted, the City of the Victory of Dupleix.

The English had made some feeble and irresolute
attempts to stop the rapid and brilliant career of the

10 rival Company, and continued to recognise Mahommed
Ali as Nabob of the Carnatic. But the dominions of
Mahommed Ali consisted of Trichinopoly alone : and
Trichinopoly was now invested by Chunda Sahib and
his French auxiliaries. To raise the siege seemed im-

15 possible. The small force which was then at Madras
had no commander. Major Lawrence had returned to
England ; and not a single officer of established char-
acter remained in the settlement. The natives had
learned to look with contempt on the mighty nation

20 which was soon to conquer and to rule them. They had
seen the French colours flying on Fort St George ; they
had seen the chiefs of the English factory led in triumph
through the streets of Pondicherry ; they had seen the
arms and counsels of Dupleix everywhere successful,

25 while the opposition which the authorities of Madras
had made to his progress, had served only to expose
their own weakness, and to heighten his glory. At this
moment, the valour and genius of an obscure English
youth suddenly turned the tide of fortune.

30 Clive was now twenty-five years old. After hesitating
for some time between a military and a commercial life,

ESSAY ON CLIVE 23

he had at length been placed in a post which partook of
both characters, that of commissary to the troops, with
the rank of captain. The present emergency called forth
all his powers. He represented to his superiors that
unless some vigorous effort were made, Trichinopoly 5
would fall, the house of Anaverdy Khan would perish,
and the French would become the real masters of the
whole peninsula of India. It was absolutely necessary
to strike some daring blow. If an attack were made on
Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic, and the favourite 10
residence of the Nabobs, it was not impossible that the
siege of Trichinopoly would be raised. The heads of
the English settlement, now thoroughly alarmed by the
success of Dupleix, and apprehensive that, in the event
of a new war between France and Great Britain, Madras 15
would be instantly taken and destroyed, approved of
Clive's plan, and intrusted the execution of it to himself.
The young captain was put at the head of two hundred
English soldiers, and three hundred sepoys, armed and
disciplined after the European fashion. Of the eight 20
officers who commanded this little force under him, only
two had ever been in action, and four of the eight were
factors of the Company, whom Clive's example had
induced to offer their services. The weather was
stormy ; but Clive pushed on, through thunder, light- 25
ning, and rain, to the gates of Arcot. The garrison, in
a panic, evacuated the fort, and the English entered it
without a blow.

But Clive well knew that he should not be suffered to
retain undisturbed possession of his conquest. He in- 30
stantly began to collect provisions, to throw up works,

24 ESSAY ON CLIVE

and to make preparations for sustaining a siege. The
garrison, which had fled at his approach, now had re-
covered from its dismay, and, having been swelled by
large reinforcements from the neighbourhood to a force
5 of three thousand men, encamped close to the town.
At dead of night, Clive marched out of the fort, attacked
the camp by surprise, slew great numbers, dispersed the
rest, and returned to his quarters without having lost a
single man.

10 The intelligence of these events was soon carried to
Chunda Sahib, who, with his French allies, was be-
sieging Trichinopoly. He immediately detached four
thousand men from his camp, and sent them to Arcot.
They were speedily joined by the remains of the force

15 which Clive had lately scattered. They 'were further
strengthened by two thousand men from Vellore, and
by a still more important reinforcement of a hundred
and fifty French soldiers whom Dupleix despatched from
Pondicherry. The whole of his army, amounting to

20 about ten thousand men, was under the command of
Rajah Sahib, son of Chunda Sahib.

Rajah Sahib proceeded to invest the fort of Arcot,
which seemed quite incapable of sustaining a siege.
The walls were ruinous, the ditches dry, the ramparts

25 too narrow to admit the guns, the battlements too
low to protect the soldiers. The little garrison had
been greatly reduced by casualties. It now consisted
of a hundred and twenty Europeans and two hundred
sepoys. Only four officers were left ; the stock of pro-

30 visions was scanty ; and the commander, who had to
conduct the defence under circumstances so discourag-

ESSAY ON CLIVE 25

ing, was a young man of five-and-twenty, who had been
bred a book-keeper.

During fifty days the siege went on. During fifty
days the young captain maintained the defence, with a
firmness, vigilance, and ability, which would have done 5
honour to the oldest marshal in Europe. The breach,
however, increased day by day. The garrison began to
feel the pressure of hunger. Under such circumstances,
any troops so scantily provided with officers might have
been expected to show signs of insubordination ; and 10
the danger was peculiarly great in a force composed of
men differing widely from each other in extraction,
colour, language, manners, and religion. But the de-
votion of the little band to its chief surpassed anything
that is related of the Tenth Legion of Csesar, or of the 15
Old Guard of Napoleon. The sepoys came to Clive,
not to complain of their scanty fare, but to propose that
all the grain should be given to the Europeans, who re-
quired more nourishment than the natives of Asia.
The thin gruel, they said, which was strained away from 20
the rice, would suffice for themselves. History contains
no more touching instance of military fidelity, or of the
influence of a commanding mind.

An attempt made by the government of Madras to
relieve the place had failed. But there was hope from 25
another quarter. A body of six thousand Mahrattas,
half soldiers, half robbers, under the command of a
chief named Morari Row, had been hired to assist
Mahommed Ali; but thinking the French power ir-
resistible, and the triumph of Chunda Sahib certain, they 30
had hitherto remained inactive on the frontiers of the

26 ESSAY ON CLIVE

Carnatic. The fame of the defence of Arcot roused
them from their torpor. Morari Row declared that he
had never before believed that Englishmen could fights
but that he would willingly help them since he saw that
S they had spirit to help themselves. Rajah Sahib
learned that the Mahrattas were in motion. It was
necessary for him to be expeditious. He first tried
negotiation. He offered large bribes to Clive, which
were rejected with scorn. He vowed that, if his pro-
10 posals were not accepted, he would instantly storm the
fort, and put every man in it to the sword. Clive told
him in reply, with characteristic haughtiness, that his
father was an usurper,. that his army was a rabble, and
that he would do well to think twice before he sent
15 such poltroons into a breach defended by English
soldiers.

Rajah Sahib determined to storm the fort. The day

was well suited to a bold military enterprise. It was the

great Mahommedan festival which is sacred to the

20 memory of Hosein, the son of Ali. The history of

Islam contains nothing more touching than the event

which gave rise to that solemnity. The mournful legend

relates how the chief of the Fatimites, when all his

brave followers had perished round him, drank his latest

25 draught of water, and uttered his latest prayer, how the

assassins carried his head in triumph, how the tyrant

smote the lifeless lips with his staff, and how a few old

men recollected with tears that they had seen those lips

pressed to the lips of the Prophet of God. After the

30 lapse of near twelve centuries, the recurrence of this

solemn season excites the fiercest and saddest emotions

ESSAY ON CLIVE 27

in the bosoms of the devout Moslems of India. They
work themselves up to such agonies of rage and lamenta-
tion that some, it is said, have given up the ghost from
the mere effect of mental excitement. They believe
that whoever, during this festival, falls in arms against 5
the infidels, atones by his death for all the sins of his
life, and passes at once to the garden of the Houris.
It was at this time that Rajah Sahib determined to
assault Arcot. Stimulating drugs were employed to aid
the effect of religious zeal, and the besiegers, drunk with 10
enthusiasm, drunk with bang, rushed furiously to the
attack.

Clive had received secret intelligence of the design,
had made his arrangements, and, exhausted by fatigue,
had thrown himself on his bed. He was awakened by 15
the alarm, and was instantly at his post. The enemy
advanced, driving before them elephants whose foreheads
were armed with iron plates. It was expected that the
gates would yield to the shock of these living battering-
rams. But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English 20
musket-balls than they turned round, and rushed
furiously away, trampling on the multitude which had
urged them forward. A raft was launched on the water
which filled one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving
that his gunners at that post did not understand their 25
business, took the management of a piece of artillery
himself, and cleared the raft in a few minutes. When
the moat was dry the assailants mounted with great
boldness; but they were received with a fire so heavy
and so well directed, that it soon quelled the courage 30
even of fanaticism and of intoxication. The rear ranks

28 ESSAY ON CLIVE

of the English kept the front ranks supplied with a
constant succession of loaded muskets, and every shot
told on the living mass below. After three desperate
onsets, the besiegers retired behind the ditch.
5 The struggle lasted about an hour. Four hundred
of the assailants fell. The garrison lost only five or
six men. The besieged passed an anxious night, looking
for a renewal of the attack. But when the day broke,
the enemy were no more to be seen. They had retired,
10 leaving to the English several guns and a large quantity
of ammunition.

The news was received at Fort St George with
transports of joy and pride. Clive was justly regarded
as a man equal to any command. Two hundred English
15 soldiers and seven hundred sepoys were sent to him,
and with this force he instantly commenced offensive
operations. He took the Fort of Timery, effected a
junction with a division of Morari Row's army, and
hastened, by forced marches, to attack Rajah Sahib,
20 who was at the head of about five thousand men, of
whom three hundred were French. The action was
sharp; but Clive gained a complete victory. The
military chest of Rajah Sahib fell into the hands of the
conquerors. Six hundred sepoys, who had served in
25 the enemy's army, came over to Clive's quarters, and
were taken into the British service. Conjeveram sur-
rendered without a blow. The governor of Arnee
deserted Chunda Sahib, and recognised the title of
Mahommed Ali.

30 Had the entire direction of the war been intrusted to
Clive, it would probably have been brought to a speedy

ESSAY ON CLIVE 29

close. But the timidity and incapacity which appeared
in all the movements of the English, except where he
was personally present, protracted the struggle. The
Mahrattas muttered that his soldiers were of a different
race from the British whom they found elsewhere. The 5
effect of this languor was that in no long time Rajah
Sahib, at the head of a considerable army, in which
were four hundred French troops, appeared almost
under the guns of Fort St George, and laid waste the
villas and gardens of the gentlemen of the English 10
settlement. But he was again encountered and defeated
by Clive. More than a hundred of the French were
killed or taken, a loss more serious than that of
thousands of natives. The victorious army marched
from the field of battle to Fort St David. On the road 15
lay the City of the Victory of Dupleix, and the stately
monument which was designed to commemorate the
triumphs of France in the East. Clive ordered both
the city and the monument to be razed to the ground.
He was induced, we believe, to take this step, not by 20
personal or national malevolence, but by a just and
profound policy. The town and its pompous name,
the pillar and its vaunting inscriptions, were among the
devices by which Dupleix had laid the public mind of
India under a spell. This spell it was dive's business 25
to break. The natives had been taught that France
was confessedly the first power in Europe, and that the
English did not presume to dispute her supremacy.
No measure could be more effectual for the removing
of this delusion than the public and solemn demolition 30
of the French trophies.

30 ESSAY ON CLIVE

The government of Madras, encouraged by these
events, determined to send a strong detachment, under
Clive, to reinforce the garrison of Trichinopoly. But
just at this conjuncture, Major Lawrence arrived from
5 England, and assumed the chief command. From the
waywardness and impatience of control which had char-
acterised Clive, both at school and in the counting-house,
it might have been expected that he would not, after
such achievements, act with zeal and good humour in a

10 subordinate capacity. But Lawrence had early treated
him with kindness ; and it is bare justice to Clive to say
that, proud and overbearing as he was, kindness was
never thrown away upon him. He cheerfully placed
himself under the orders of his old friend, and exerted

15 himself as strenuously in the second post as he could
have done in the first. Lawrence well knew the value
of such assistance. Though himself gifted with no intel-
lectual faculty higher than plain good sense, he fully
appreciated the powers of his brilliant _coadjutor.

20 Though he had made a methodical study of military
tactics, and, like all men regularly bred to a profession,
was disposed to look with disdain on interlopers, he had
yet liberality enough to acknowledge that Clive was an
exception to common rules. "Some people," he wrote,

25 " are pleased to term Captain Clive fortunate and lucky ;
but, in my opinion, from the knowledge I have of the
gentleman, he deserved and might expect from his con-
duct everything as it fell out ; — a man of an undaunted
resolution, of a cool temper, and of a presence of mind

30 which never left him in the greatest danger — born a
soldier ; for, without a military education of any sort, or

ESSAY ON CLIVE 31

much conversing with any of the profession, from his
judgment and good sense, he led on an army like an
experienced officer and a brave soldier, with a prudence
that certainly warranted success."

The French had no commander to oppose to the two 5
friends. Dupleix, not inferior in talents for negotiation
and intrigue to any European who has borne a part in
the revolutions of India, was ill qualified to direct in
person military operations. He had not been bred a
soldier, and had no inclination to become one. His 10
enemies accused him of personal cowardice; and he
defended himself in a strain worthy of Captain Bobadil.
He kept away from shot, he said, because silence and
tranquillity were propitious to his genius, and he found
it difficult to pursue his meditations amidst the noise of 15
fire-arms. He was thus under the necessity of intrusting
to others the execution of his great warlike designs;
and he bitterly complained that he was ill served. He
had indeed been assisted by one officer of eminent merit,
the celebrated Bussy. But Bussy had marched north- 20
ward with the Nizam, and was fully employed in looking
after his own interests, and those of France, at the court
of that prince. Among the officers who remained with
Dupleix, there was not a single man of capacity ; and
many of them were boys, at whose ignorance and folly 25
the common soldiers laughed.

The English triumphed everywhere. The besiegers
of Trichinopoly were themselves besieged and compelled
to capitulate. Chunda Sahib fell into the hands of the
Mahrattas, and was put to death, at the instigation prob- 30
ably of his competitor, Mahommed Ali. The spirit of

32 ESSAY ON CLIVE

Dupleix, however, was unconquerable, and his resources
inexhaustible. From his employers in Europe he no
longer received help or countenance. They condemned
his policy. They gave him no pecuniary assistance.
5 They sent him for troops only the sweepings of the
galleys. Yet still he persisted, intrigued, bribed, pro-
mised, lavished his private fortune, strained his credit,
procured new diplomas from Delhi, raised up new
enemies to the government of Madras on every side, and

10 found tools even among the allies of the English Company.
But all was in vain. Slowly, but steadily, the power of
Britain continued to increase, and that of France to
decline.

The health of Clive had never been good during his

15 residence in India; and his constitution was now so
much impaired that he determined to return to England.
Before his departure he undertook a service of consider-
able difficulty, and performed it with his usual vigour
and dexterity. The forts of Covelong and Chingleput

20 were occupied by French garrisons. It was determined
to send a force against them. But the only force avail-
able for this purpose was of such a description that no
officer but Clive would risk his reputation by command-
ing it. It consisted of five hundred newly levied sepoys

25 and two hundred recruits who had just landed from
England, and who were the worst and lowest wretches
that the Company's crimps could pick up in the flash-
houses of London. Clive, ill and exhausted as he was,
undertook to make an army of this undisciplined rabble,

30 and marched with them to Covelong. A shot from the
fort killed one of these extraordinary soldiers ; on which

ESSAY ON CLIVE 33

all the rest faced about and ran away, and it was with
the greatest difficulty that Clive rallied them. On
another occasion, the noise of a gun terrified the sentinels
so much that one of them was found, some hours later,
at the bottom of a well. Clive gradually accustomed 5
them to danger, and, by exposing himself constantly in
the most perilous situations, shamed them into courage.
He at length succeeded in forming a respectable force
out of his unpromising materials. Covelong fell. Clive
learned that a strong detachment was marching to relieve 10
it from Chingleput. He took measures to prevent the
enemy from learning that they were too late, laid an am-
buscade for them on the road, killed a hundred of them
with one fire, took three hundred prisoners, pursued the
fugitives to the gates of Chingleput, laid siege instantly 15
to that fastness, reputed one of the strongest in India,
made a breach, and was on the point of storming, when
the French commandant capitulated and retired with his
men.

Clive returned to Madras victorious, but in a state of 20
health which rendered it impossible for him to remain
there long. He married at this time a young lady of
the name of Maskelyne, sister of the eminent mathe-
matician, who long held the post of Astronomer Royal.
She is described as handsome and accomplished ; and 25
her husband's letters, it is said, contain proofs that he
was devotedly attached to her.

Almost immediately after the marriage, Clive em-
barked with his bride for England. He returned a very
different person from the poor slighted boy who had 30
been sent out ten years before to seek his fortune. He

34 ESSAY ON CLIVE

was only twenty-seven ; yet his country already respected
him as one of her first soldiers. There was then
general peace in Europe. The Carnatic was the only
part of the world where the English and French were

5 in arms against each other. The vast schemes of
Dupleix had excited no small uneasiness in the city of
London ; and the rapid turn of fortune, which was
chiefly owing to the courage and talents of Clive, had
been hailed with great delight. The young captain was

10 known at the India House by the honourable nickname
of General Clive, and was toasted by that appellation at
the feasts of the Directors. On his arrival in England,
he found himself an object of general interest and
admiration. The East India Company thanked him

15 for his services in the warmest terms, and bestowed on
him a sword set with diamonds. With rare delicacy, he
refused to receive this token of gratitude, unless a
similar compliment were paid to his friend and com-
mander, Lawrence.

20 It may easily be supposed that Clive was most cordi-
ally welcomed home by his family, who were delighted
by his success, though they seem to have been hardly
able to comprehend how their naughty idle Bobby had
become so great a man. His father had been singularly

25 hard of belief. Not until the news of the defence of
Arcot arrived in England was the old gentleman heard
to growl out that, after all, the booby had something in
him. His expressions of approbation became stronger
and stronger as news arrived of one brilliant exploit

30 after another; and he was at length immoderately fond
and proud of his son.

ESSAY ON CLIVE 35

Olive's relations had very substantial reasons for
rejoicing at his return. Considerable sums of prize
money had fallen to his share; and he had brought
home a moderate fortune, part of which he expended in
extricating his father from pecuniary difficulties, and in 5
redeeming the family estate. The remainder he appears
to have dissipated in the course of about two years.
He lived splendidly, dressed gaily even for those times,
kept a carriage and saddle-horses, and, not content with
these ways of getting rid of his money, resorted to the 10
most speedy and effectual of all modes of evacuation, a
contested election followed by a petition.

At the time of the general election of 1754, the
Government was in a very singular state. There was
scarcely any formal opposition. The Jacobites had 15
been cowed by the issue of the last rebellion. The
Tory party had fallen into utter contempt. It had been
deserted by all the men of talents who had belonged to
it, and had scarcely given a syjmptpmoj life during some
years. The small faction which had been held together 20
by the influence and promises of Prince Frederic, had
been dispersed by his death. Almost every public man
of distinguished talents in the kingdom, whatever his
early connections might have been, was in office, and
called himself a Whig. But this extraordinary appear- 25
ance of concord was quite delusive. The administration
itself was distracted by bitter enmities and conflicting
pretensions. The chief object of its members was to
depress and supplant each other. The Prime Minister,
Newcastle, weak, timid, jealous, and p^tfidious^was at 30
once detested and despised by some of the most im-

36 ESSAY ON CLIVE

portant members of his Government, and by none

more than by Henry Fox, the Secretary-at-War.

This able, daring, and ambitious man seized every

opportunity of crossing the First Lord of the Treasury,

5 from whom he well knew that he had little to dread and

little to hope ; for Newcastle was through life equally

afraid of breaking with men of parts and of promoting

them.

Newcastle had set his heart on returning two members

10 for St Michael, one of those wretched Cornish boroughs
which were swept away by the Reform Act of 1832.
He was opposed by Lord Sandwich, whose influence had
long been paramount there : and Fox exerted himself
strenuously in Sandwich's behalf. Clive, who had been

15 introduced to Fox, and very kindly received by him, was
brought forward on the Sandwich interest, and was
returned. But a petition was presented against the
return, and was backed by the whole influence of the
Duke of Newcastle.

20 The case was heard, according to the usage of that
time, before a committee of the whole House. Ques-
tions respecting elections were then considered merely
as party questions. Judicial impartiality was not even
affected. Sir Robert Walpole was in the habit of saying

25 openly that, in election battles, there ought to be no
quarter. On the present occasion the excitement was
great. The matter really at issue was, not whether
Give had been properly or improperly returned, but
whether Newcastle or Fox was to be master of the new

30 House of Commons, and consequently first minister.
The contest was long and obstinate, and success seemed

ESSAY ON CLIVE 37

to lean sometimes to one side and sometimes to the
other. Fox put forth all his rare powers of debate, beat
half the lawyers in the House at their own weapons, and
carried division after division against the whole influence
of the Treasury. The committee decided in dive's 5
favour. But when the resolution was reported to the
House, things took a different course. The remnant of
the Tory Opposition, contemptible as it was, had yet
sufficient weight to turn the scale between the nicely
balanced parties of Newcastle and Fox. Newcastle, the 10
Tories could only despise. Fox they hated, as the
boldest and most subtle politician and the ablest debater
among the WhigspaVtlie steady friend of Walpole, as
the devoted adherent of the Duke of Cumberland.
After wavering till the last moment, they determined to 15
vote in a body with the Prime Minister's friends. The
consequence was that the House, by a small majority,
rescinded the decision of the committee, and Clive was
unseated.

Ejected from Parliament, and straitened in his means, 20
he naturally began to look again towards India. The
Company and the Government were eager to avail
themselves of his services. A treaty favourable to
England had indeed been concluded in the Carnatic.
Dupleix had been superseded, and had returned with 25
the wreck of his immense fortune to Europe, where
calumny and chicanery soon hunted him to his grave.
But many signs indicated that a war between France and
Great Britain was at hand ; and it was therefore thought
desirable to send an able commander to the Company's 30
settlements in India. The Directors appointed Clive

38 ESSAY ON CLIVE

governor of Fort St David. The King gave him the
commission of a lieutenant-colonel in the British army,
and in 1755 he again sailed for Asia.

The first service on which he was employed after his
5 return to the East was the reduction of the stronghold
of Gheriah. This fortress, built on a craggy promontory,
and almost surrounded by the ocean, was the den of a
pirate named Angria, whose barks had long been the
terror of the Arabian Gulf. Admiral Watson, who com-

10 manded the English squadron in the Eastern seas,
burned Angria's fleet, while Clive attacked the fastness
by land. The place soon fell, and a booty of a hundred
and fifty thousand pounds sterling was divided among
the conquerors.

15 After this exploit, Clive proceeded to his government
of Fort St David. Before he had been there two months,
he received intelligence which called forth all the energy
of his bold and active mind.

Of the provinces which had been subject to the house

20 of Tamerlane, the wealthiest was Bengal. No part of
India possessed such natural advantages both for agri-
culture and for commerce. The Ganges, rushing
through a hundred channels to the sea, has formed a
vast plain of rich mould which, even under the tropical

25 sky, rivals the verdure of an English April. The rice-
fields yield an increase such as is elsewhere unknown.
Spices, sugar, vegetable oils, are produced with marvel-
lous exuberance. The rivers afford an inexhaustible
supply of fish. The desolate islands along the" sea-coast,

30 overgrown by uoxious vegetation, and swarming with
deer and tigers, supply the cultivated districts with

ESSAY ON CLIVE 39

abundance of salt. The great stream which fertilises
the soil is, at the same time, the chief highway of
Eastern commerce. On its banks, and on those of its
tributary waters, are the wealthiest marts, the most
splendid capitals, and the most sacred shrines of India. 5
The tyranny of man had for ages struggled in vain
against the overflowing bounty of nature. In spite of
the Mussulman despot and of the Mahratta freebooter,
Bengal was known through the East as the garden of
Eden, as the rich kingdom. Its population multiplied 10
exceedingly. Distant provinces were nourished from
the overflowing of its granaries ; and the noble ladies of
London and Paris were clothed in the delicate produce
of its looms. The race by whom this rich tract was
peopled, enervated by a soft climate and accustomed to 15
peaceful employments, bore the same relation to other
Asiatics which the Asiatics generally bear to the bold
and energetic children of Europe. The Castilians have
a proverb, that in Valencia the earth is water and the
men women ; and the description is at least equally 20
applicable to the vast plain of the Lower Ganges.
Whatever the Bengalee does he does languidly. His
favourite pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from
bodily exertion; and, though voluble in dispute, and
singularly pertinacious in the war of chicane, he seldom 25
engages in a personal conflict, and scarcely ever enlists
as a soldier. We doubt whether there be a hundred
genuine Bengalees in the whole army of the East India
Company. There never, perhaps, existed a people so
thoroughly fitted by nature and by habit for a foreign 30
yoke.

40 ESSAY ON CLIVE

The great commercial companies of Europe had long
possessed factories in Bengal. The French were settled,
as they still are, at Chandernagore on the Hoogley.
Higher up the stream the Dutch held Chinsurah.
5 Nearer to the sea, the English had built Fort William.
A church and ample warehouses rose in the vicinity.
A row of spacious houses, belonging to the chief factors
of the East India Company, lined the banks of the river ;
and in the neighbourhood had sprung up a large and

10 busy native town, where some Hindoo merchants of
great opulence had fixed their abode. But the tract
now covered by the palaces of Chowringhee contained
only a few miserable huts thatched with straw. A jungle,
abandoned to water-fowl and alligators, covered the site

15 of the present Citadel, and the Course, which is now
daily crowded at sunset with the gayest equipages of
Calcutta. For the ground on which the settlement
stood, the English, like other great landholders, paid rent
to the (Government; and they were, like other great

20 landholders, permitted to exercise a certain jurisdiction
within their domain.

The great province of Bengal, together with Orissa
and Bahar, had long been governed by a viceroy, whom
the English called Aliverdy Khan, and who, like the

25 other viceroys of the Mogul, had become virtually
independent. He died in 1756, and the sovereignty
descended to his grandson, a youth under twenty
years of age, who bore the name of Surajah Dowlah.
Oriental despots are perhaps the worst class of human

30 beings ; and this unhappy boy was one of the worst
specimens of his class. His understanding was naturally

ESSAY ON CLIVE 41

feeble, and his temper naturally unamiable. His educa-
tion had been such as would have enervated even a
vigorous intellect, and perverted even a generous disposi-
tion. He was unreasonable, because nobody ever dared
to reason with him, and selfish, because he had never 5
been made to feel himself dependent on the good will
of others. Early debauchery had unnerved his body
and his mind. He indulged immoderately in the use
of ardent spirits, which inflamed his weak brain almost
to madness. His chosen companions were flatterers 10
sprung from the dregs of the people, and recommended
by nothing but buffoonery and servility. It is said that
he had arrived at the last stage of human depravity,
when cruelty becomes pleasing for its own sake, when
the sight of pain as pain, where no advantage is to be 15
gained, no offence punished, no danger averted, is an
agreeable excitement. It had early been his amusement
to torture beasts and birds ; and, when he grew up, he
enjoyed with still keener relish the misery of hfs fellow-
creatures. 20

From a child Surajah Dowlah had hated the English.
It was his whim to do so ; and his whims were never
opposed. He had also formed a very exaggerated notion
of the wealth which might be obtained by plundering
them ; and his feeble and uncultivated mind was incap- 25
able of perceiving that the riches of Calcutta, had they
been even greater than he imagined, would not com-
pensate him for what he must lose, if the European
trade, of which Bengal was a chief seat, should be
driven by his violence to some other quarter. Pretexts 30
for a quarrel were readily found. The English, in

42 ESSAY ON CLIVE

expectation of a war with France, had begun to fortify
their settlement without special permission from the
Nabob. A rich native, whom he longed to plunder,
had taken refuge at Calcutta, and had not been delivered

5 up. On such grounds as these Surajah Dowlah marched
with a great army against Fort William.

The servants of the Company at Madras had been
forced by Dupleix to become statesmen and soldiers.
Those in Bengal were still mere traders, and were

10 terrified and bewildered by the approaching danger.
The governor, who had heard much of Surajah Dowlah's
cruelty, was frightened out of his wits, jumped into
a boat, and took refuge in the nearest ship. The
military commandant thought that he could not do

15 better than follow so good an example. The fort was
taken after a feeble resistance; and great numbers of
the English fell into the hands of the conquerors. The
Nabob seated himself with regal pomp in the principal
hall of the factory, and ordered Mr Holwell, the first in

20 rank among the prisoners, to be brought before him.
His Highness talked about the insolence of the English,
and grumbled at the smallness of the treasure which he
had found, but promised to spare their lives, and retired
to rest.

25 Then was committed that great crime, memorable for
its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous
retribution by which it was followed. The English
captives were left to the mercy of the guards, and the
guards determined to secure them for the night in the

30 prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful
name of the Black Hole. Even for a single European

ESSAY ON CLIVE 43

malefactor, that dungeon would, in such a climate, have
been too close and narrow. The space was only twenty
feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed.
It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce
heat of Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to 5
natives of England by lofty halls and by the constant
waving of fans. The number of the prisoners was one
hundred and forty-six. When they were ordered to
enter the cell, they imagined that the soldiers were
joking ; and, being in high spirits on account of the 10
promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, they laughed
and jested at the absurdity of the notion. They soon
discovered their mistake. They expostulated; they
entreated ; but in vain. The guards threatened to cut
down all who hesitated. The captives were driven into 15
the cell at the point of the sword, and the door was
instantly shut and locked upon them.

Nothing in history or fiction, not even the story
which Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he
had wiped his bloody lips on the scalp of his murderer, 20
approaches the horrors which were recounted by the
few survivors of that night. They cried for mercy.
They strove to burst the door. Holwell who, even in
that extremity, retained some presence of mind, offered
large bribes to the gaolers. But the answer was that 25
nothing could be done without the Nabob's orders, that
the Nabob Was asleep, and that he would be angry if
anybody woke him. Then the prisoners went mad with
despair. They trampled each other down, fought for
the places at the windows, fought for the pittance of 30
water with which the cruel mercy of the murderers

44 ESSAY ON CLIVE

mocked their agonies, raved, prayed, blasphemed, im-
plored the guards to fire among them. The gaolers in
the meantime held lights to the bars, and shouted with
laughter at the frantic struggles of their victims. At
5 length the tumult died away in low gaspingsand moanings.
The day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and
permitted the door to be opened. But it was some time
before the soldiers could make a lane for the survivors,
by piling up on each side the heaps of corpses on which

10 the burning climate had already begun to do its loath-
some work. When at length a passage was made,
twenty-three ghastly figures, such as their own mothers
would not have known, staggered one by one out of the
charnel-house. A pit was instantly dug. The dead

15 bodies, a hundred and twenty-three in number, were
filing into it promiscuously and covered up.

But these things — which, after the lapse of more than
eighty years, cannot be told or read without horror —
awakened neither remorse nor pity in the bosom of the

20 savage Nabob. He inflicted no punishment on the
murderers. He showed no tenderness to the survivors.
Some of them, indeed, from whom nothing was to be
got, were suffered to depart; but those from whom it
was thought that anything could be extorted were treated

25 with execrable cruelty. Holwell, unable to walk, was
carried before the tyrant, who reproached him, threatened
him, and sent him up the country in irons, together
with some other gentlemen who were suspected of
knowing more than they chose to tell about the

30 treasures of the Company. These persons, still bowed
down by the sufferings of that great agony, were lodged

ESSAY ON CLIVE 45

in miserable sheds, and fed only with grain and water,
till at length the intercessions of the female relations of
the Nabob procured their release. One Englishwoman
had survived that night. She was placed in the harem
of the Prince at Moorshedabad. 5

Surajah Dowlah, in the meantime, sent letters to his
nominal sovereign at Delhi, describing the late conquest
in the most pompous language. He placed a garrison
in Fort William, forbade Englishmen to dwell in the
neighbourhood, and directed that, in memory of his 10
great actions, Calcutta should thenceforward be called
Alinagore, that is to say, the Port of God.

In August the news of the fall of Calcutta reached
Madras, and excited the fiercest and bitterest resent-
ment. The cry of the whole settlement was for 15
vengeance. Within forty-eight hours after the arrival of
the intelligence it was determined that an expedition
should be sent to the Hoogley, and that Clive should be
at the head of the land forces. The naval armament
was under the command of Admiral Watson. Nine 20
hundred English infantry, fine troops and full of spirit,
and fifteen hundred sepoys, composed the army which
sailed to punish a Prince who had more subjects than
Lewis the Fifteenth or the Empress Maria Theresa. In
October the expedition sailed; but it had to make its 25
way against adverse winds and did not reach Bengal
till December.

The Nabob was revelling in fancied security at Moor-
shedabad. He was so profoundly ignorant of the state
of foreign countries that he often used to say that there 30
were not ten thousand men in all Europe ; and it had

46 ESSAY ON CLIVE

never occurred to him as possible that the English would
dare to invade his dominions. But, though undisturbed
by any fear of their military power, he began to miss
them greatly. His revenues fell off; and his ministers
5 succeeded in making him understand that a ruler may
sometimes find it more profitable to protect traders in
the open enjoyment of their gains than to put them to
the torture for the purpose of discovering hidden chests
of gold and jewels. He was already disposed to permit

10 the Company to resume its mercantile operations in his
country, when he received the news that an English
armament was in the Hoogley. He instantly ordered
all his troops to assemble at Moorshedabad, and marched
towards Calcutta.

15 Clive had commenced operations with his usual
vigour. He took Budge-budge, routed the garrison of
Fort William, recovered Calcutta, stormed and sacked
Hoogley. The Nabob, already disposed to make some
concessions to the English, was confirmed in his pacific

20 disposition by these proofs of their power and spirit. He
accordingly made overtures to the chiefs of the invading
armament, and offered to restore the factory, and to give
compensation to those whom he had despoiled.

Clive's profession was war ; and he felt that there was

25 something discreditable in an accommodation with
Surajah Dowlah. But his power was limited. A com-
mittee, chiefly composed of servants of the Company who
had fled from Calcutta, had the principal direction of
affairs ; and these persons were eager to be restored to

30 their posts and compensated for their losses. The
government of Madras, apprised that war had commenced

ESSAY ON CLIVE 47

in Europe, and apprehensive of an attack from the French,
became impatient for the return of the armament. The
promises of the Nabob were large, the chances of a con-
test doubtful ; and Clive consented to treat, though he
expressed his regret that things should not be concluded 5
in so glorious a manner as he could have wished.

With this negotiation commences a new chapter in
the life of Clive. Hitherto he had been merely a soldier
carrying into effect, with eminent ability and valour, the
plans of others. Henceforth he is to be chiefly regarded 10
as a statesman ; and his military movements are to be
considered as subordinate to his political designs.
That in his new capacity he displayed great ability, and
obtained great success, is unquestionable. But it is also
unquestionable that the transactions in which he now 15
began to take a part have left a stain on his moral char-
acter.

We can by no means agree with Sir John Malcolm,
who is obstinately resolved to see nothing but honour
and integrity in the conduct of his hero. But we can as 20
little agree with Mr Mill, who has gone so far as to say
that Clive was a man "to whom deception, when it
suited his purpose, never cost a pang." Clive seems to
us to have been constitutionally the very opposite of a
knave, bold even to temerity, sincere even to indiscretion, 25
hearty in friendship, open in enmity. Neither in his
private life, nor in those parts of his public life in which
he had to do with his countrymen, do we find any signs
of a propensity to cunning. On the contrary, in all the
disputes in which he was engaged as an Englishman 30
against Englishmen, from his boxing-matches at school

48 ESSAY ON CLIVE

to those stormy altercations at the India House and in
Parliament amidst which his later years were passed, his
very faults were those of a high and magnanimous spirit.
The truth seems to have been that he considered Oriental
5 politics as a game in which nothing was unfair. He
knew that the standard of morality among the natives of
India differed widely from that established in England.
He knew that he had to deal with men destitute of what
in Europe is called honour, with men who would give

10 any promise without hesitation, and break any promise
without shame, with men who would unscrupulously em-
ploy corruption, perjury, forgery, to compass their ends.
His letters show that the great difference between Asiatic
and European morality was constantly in his thoughts.

15 He seems to have imagined, most erroneously in our
opinion, that he could effect nothing against such adver-
saries, if he was content to be bound by ties from which
they were free, if he went on telling truth, and hearing
none, if he fulfilled, to his own hurt, all his engagements

20 with confederates who never kept an engagement that
was not to their advantage. Accordingly this man, in
the other parts of his life an honourable English gentle-
man and a soldier, was no sooner matched against
an Indian intriguer, than he became himself an Indian

25 intriguer, and descended, without scruple, to falsehood,
to hypocritical caresses, to the substitution of documents,
and to the counterfeiting of hands.

The negotiations between the English and the Nabob
were carried on chiefly by two agents, Mr Watts, a

30 servant of the Company, and a Bengalee of the name
of Omichund. This Omichund had been one of the

ESSAY ON CLIVE 49

wealthiest native merchants resident at Calcutta, and
had sustained great losses in consequence of the Nabob's
expedition against that place. In the course of his
commercial transactions, he had seen much of the
English, and was peculiarly qualified to serve as a 5
medium of communication between them and a native
court. He possessed great influence with his own race,
and had in large measure the Hindoo talents, quick
observation, . tact, dexterity, perseverance, and the
Hindoo vices, servility, greediness, and treachery. 10

The Nabob behaved with all the faithlessness of an
Indian statesman, and with all the levity of a boy whose
mind had been enfeebled by power and self-indulgence.
He promised, retracted, hesitated, evaded. At one
time he advanced with his army in a threaten ing manner 15
towards Calcutta; but when he saw the resolute front
which the English presented, he fell back in alarm, and
consented to make peace with them on their own terms.
The treaty was no sooner concluded than he formed new
designs against them. He intrigued with the French 20
authorities at Chandernagore. He invited Bussy to
march from the Deccan to the Hoogley, and to drive
the English out of Bengal. All this was well known to
Clive and Watson. They determined accordingly to
strike a decisive blow, and to attack Chandernagore, 25
before .the force there could be strengthened by new
arrivals, either from the south of India, or from Europe.
Watson directed the expedition by water, Clive by land.
The success of the combined movements was rapid and
complete. The fort, the garrison, the artillery, the 30
military stores, all fell into the hands of the English.

So ESSAY ON CLIVE

Near five hundred European troops were among the
prisoners.

The Nabob had feared and hated the English, even
while he was still able to oppose to them their French
5 rivals. The French were now vanquished ; and he
began to regard the English with still greater fear and
still greater hatred. His weak and unprincipled mind
oscillated between servility and insolence. One day he
sent a large sum to Calcutta, as part of the compensation

10 due for the wrongs which he had committed. The next
day he sent a present of jewels to Bussy, exhorting that
distinguished officer to hasten to protect Bengal " against
Clive, the daring in war, on whom," says his Highness,
"may all bad fortune attend." He ordered his army

15 to march against the English. He countermanded
his orders. He tore Clive's letters. He then sent
answers in the most florid language of compliment.
He ordered Watts out of his presence, and threatened
to impale him. He again sent for Watts, and begged

20 pardon for the insult. In the meantime, his wretched
maladministration, his folly, his dissolute manners, and
his love of the lowest company, had disgusted all classes
of his subjects, soldiers, traders, civil functionaries, the
proud and ostentatious Mahommedans, the timid, supple,

25 and parsimonious Hindoos. A formidable confederacy
was formed against him, in which were included Roy-
dullub, the minister of finance, Meer Jaffier, the principal
commander of the troops, and Jugget Seit, the richest
banker in India. The plot was confided to the English

30 agents, and a communication was opened between the mal-
contents at Moorshedabad and the committee at Calcutta.

ESSAY ON CLIVE 51

In the committee there was much hesitation; but
Clive's voice was given in favour of the conspirators, and
his vigour and firmness bore down all opposition. It
was determined that the English should lend their
powerful assistance to depose Surajah Dowlah, and to 5
place Meer Jaffier on the throne of Bengal. In return,
Meer Jaffier promised ample compensation to the
Company and its servants, and a liberal donative to the
army, the navy, and the committee. The odious vices
of Surajah Dowlah, the wrongs which the English had 10
suffered at his hands, the dangers to which our trade
must have been exposed, had he continued to reign,
appear to us fully to justify the resolution of deposing
him. But nothing can justify the dissimulation which
Clive stooped to practise. He wrote to Surajah Dowlah 15
in terms so affectionate that they for a time lulled that
weak prince into perfect security. The same courier
who carried this "soothing letter," as Clive calls it, to
the Nabob, carried to Mr Watts a letter in the following
terms : " Tell Meer Jaffier to fear nothing. I will join 20
him with five thousand men who never turned their
backs. Assure him I will march night and day to his
assistance, and stand by him as long as I have a man
left."

It was impossible that a plot which had so many 25
ramifications should long remain entirely concealed.
Enough reached the ears of the Nabob to arouse his
suspicions. But he was soon quieted by the fictions and
artifices which the inventive genius of Omichund pro-
duced with miraculous readiness. All was going well ; 30
the plot was nearly ripe ; when Clive learned that Omi-

52 ESSAY ON CLIVE

chund was likely to play false. The artful Bengalee had
been promised a liberal compensation for all that he had
lost at Calcutta. But this would not satisfy him. His
services had been great. He held the thread of the
5 whole intrigue. By one word breathed in the ear of
Surajah Dowlah, he could undo all that he had done.
The lives of Watts, of Meer Jaffier, of all the conspira-
tors, were at his mercy; and he determined to take
advantage of his situation and to make his own terms.

10 He demanded three hundred thousand pounds sterling
as the price of his secrecy and of his assistance. The
committee, incensed by the treachery and appalled by
the danger, knew not what course to take. But dive
was more than Omichund's match in Omichund's own

15 arts. The man, he said, was a villain. Any artifice
which would defeat such knavery was justifiable. The
best course would be to promise what was asked. Omi-
chund would soon be at their mercy ; and then they
might punish him by withholding from him, not only the

20 bribe which he now demanded, but also the compensa-
tion which all the other sufferers of Calcutta were to
receive.

His advice was taken. But how was the wary and
sagacious Hindoo to be deceived ? He had demanded

25 that an article touching his claims should be inserted in
the treaty between Meer Jaffier and the English, and he
would not be satisfied unless he saw it with his own
eyes. Clive had an expedient ready. Two treaties
were drawn up, one on white paper, the other on red,

30 the former real, the latter fictitious. In the former
Omichund's name was not mentioned; the latter, which

ESSAY ON CLIVE 53

was to be shown to him, contained a stipulation in his
favour.

But another difficulty arose. Admiral Watson had
scruples about signing the red treaty. Omichund's
vigilance and acuteness were such that the absence of 5
so important a name would probably awaken his sus-
picions. But Clive was not a man to do anything by
halves. We almost blush to write it. He forged
Admiral Watson's name.

All was now ready for action. Mr Watts fled secretly 10
from Moorshedabad. Give put his troops in motion,
and wrote to the Nabob in a tone very different from
that of his previous letters. He set forth all the wrongs
which the British had suffered, offered to submit the
points in dispute to the arbitration of Meer Jaffier, and 15
concluded by announcing that, as the rains were about
to set in, he and his men would do themselves the
honour of waiting on his Highness for an answer.

Surajah Dowlah instantly assembled his whole force,
and marched to encounter the English. It had been 20
agreed that Meer Jaffier should separate himself from
the Nabob, and carry over his division to Clive. But,
as the decisive moment approached, the fears of the
conspirator overpowered his ambition. Clive had
advanced to Cossimbuzar; the Nabob lay with a mighty 25
power a few miles off at Plassey ; and still Meer Jaffier
delayed to fulfil his engagements, and returned evasive
answers to the earnest remonstrances of the English
general.

Clive was in a painfully anxious situation. He could 30
place no confidence in the sincerity or in the courage

54 ESSAY ON CLIVE

of his confederate : and, whatever confidence he might
place in his own military talents, and in the valour and
discipline of his troops, it was no light thing to engage
an army twenty times as numerous as his own. Before
5 him lay a river over which it was easy to advance, but
over which, if things went ill, not one of his little band
would ever return. On this occasion, for the first and
for the last time, his dauntless spirit, during a few hours,
shrank from the fearful responsibility of making a

10 decision. He called a council of war. The majority
pronounced against fighting ; and Clive declared his
concurrence with the majority. Long afterwards, he
said that he had never called but one council of war,
and that, if he had taken the advice of that council, the

15 British would never have been masters of Bengal. But
scarcely had the meeting broken up when he was himself
again. He retired alone under the shade of some trees,
and passed near an hour there in thought. He came
back determined to put everything to the hazard, and

20 gave orders that all should be in readiness for passing
the river on the morrow.

The river was passed ; and, at the close of a toilsome
day's march, the army, long after sunset, took up its
quarters in a grove of mango-trees near Plassey, within

25 a mile of the enemy. Clive was unable to sleep ; he
heard, through the whole night, the sound of drums and
cymbals from the vast camp of the Nabob. It is not
strange that even his stout heart should now and then
have sunk, when he reflected against what odds, and

30 for what a prize, he was in a few hours to contend.

Nor was the rest of Surajah Dowlah more peaceful.

ESSAY ON CLIVE 55

His mind, at once weak and stormy, was distracted by
wild and horrible apprehensions. Appalled by the
greatness and nearness of the crisis, distrusting his
captains, dreading every one who approached him,
dreading to be left alone, he sat gloomily in his tent, 5
haunted, a Greek poet would have said, by the furies
of those who had cursed him with their last breath in
the Black Hole.

The day broke, the day which was to decide the fate
of India. At sunrise the army of the Nabob, pouring 10
through many openings of the camp, began to move
towards the groyne where the English lay. Forty
thousand infantry, armed with firelocks, pikes, swords,
bows and arrows, covered the plain. They were ac-
companied by fifty pieces of ordnance of the largest 15
size, each tugged by a long team of white oxen, and
each pushed on from behind by an elephant. Some
smaller guns, under the direction of a few French
auxiliaries, were perhaps more formidable. The cavalry
were fifteen thousand, drawn, not from the effeminate 20
population of Bengal, but from the bolder race which
inhabits the northern provinces ; and the practised eye
of Clive could perceive that both the men and the
horses were more powerful than those of the Carnatic.
The force which he had to oppose to this great multitude 25
consisted of only three thousand men. But of these
nearly a thousand were English; and all were led by
English officers, and trained in the English discipline.
Conspicuous in the ranks of the little army were the
men of the Thirty-Ninth Regiment, which still bears on 30
its colours, amidst many honourable additions won

56 ESSAY ON CLIVE

under Wellington in Spain and Gascony, the name of
Plassey, and the proud motto, Primus in Indis.

The battle commenced with a cannonade in which the
artillery of the Nabob did scarcely any execution, while
5 the few field-pieces of the English produced great effect.
Several of the most distinguished officers in Surajah
Dowlah's service fell. Disorder began to spread through
his ranks. His own terror increased every moment.
One of the conspirators urged on him the expediency of

10 retreating. The , insidious advice, agreeing as it did
with what his own terrors suggested, was readily received.
He ordered his army to fall back, and this order decided
his fate. Clive snatched the moment, and ordered his
troops to advance. The confused and dispirited

15 multitude gave way before the onset of disciplined
valour. No mob attacked by regular soldiers was ever
more completely routed. The little band of French-
men, who alone ventured to confront the English, were
swept down the stream of fugitives. In an hour the

20 forces of Surajah Dowlah were dispersed, never to re-
assemble. Only five hundred of the vanquished were
slain. But their camp, their guns, their baggage, in-
numerable waggons, innumerable cattle, remained in
the power of the conquerors. With the loss of twenty-

25 two soldiers killed and fifty wounded, Clive had
scattered an army of near sixty thousand men, and
subdued an empire larger and more populous than
Great Britain.

Meer Jaffier had given no assistance to the English

30 during the action. But, as soon as he saw that the fate
of the day was decided, he drew off his division of the

ESSAY ON CLIVE 57

army, and, when the battle was over, sent his congratu-
lations to his ally. The next morning he repaired to
the English quarters, not a little uneasy as to the re-
ception which awaited him there. He gave evident
signs of alarm when a guard was drawn out to receive 5
him with the honours due to his rank. But his
apprehensions were speedily removed, Clive came for-
ward to meet him, embraced him, saluted him as Nabob
of the three great provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa,
listened graciously to his apologies, and advised him to 10
march without delay to Moorshedabad.

Surajah Dowlah had fled from the field of battle with
all the speed with which a fleet camel could carry him,
and arrived at Moorshedabad in little more than twenty-
four hours. There he called his councillors round him. 15
The wisest advised him to put himself into the hands of
the English, from whom he had nothing worse to fear
than deposition and confinement. But he attributed
this suggestion to treachery. Others urged him to
try the chance of war again. He approved the advice, 20
and issued orders accordingly. But he wanted spirit to
adhere even during one day to a manly resolution. He
learned that Meer Jaffier had arrived, and his terrors
became insupportable. Disguised in a mean dress,
with a casket of jewels in his hand, he let himself down 25
at night from a window of his palace, and accompanied
by only two attendants, embarked on the river for
Patna.

In a few days Clive arrived at Moorshedabad, escorted
by two hundred English soldiers and three hundred 30
sepoys. For his residence had been assigned a palace,

58 ESSAY ON CLIVE

which was surrounded by a garden so spacious that all
the troops who accompanied him could conveniently
encamp within it. The ceremony of the installation
of Meer Jaffier was instantly performed. Clive led the
5 new Nabob to the seat of honour, placed him on it,
presented to him, after the immemorial fashion of the
East, an offering of gold, and then, turning to the natives
who filled the hall, congratulated them on the good
fortune which had freed them from a tyrant. He was

10 compelled on this occasion to use the services of an
interpreter ; for it is remarkable that, long as he resided
in India, intimately acquainted as he was with Indian
politics and with the Indian character, and adored as
he was by his Indian soldiery, he never learned to ex-

15 press himself with facility in any Indian language. He
is said indeed to have been sometimes under the
necessity of employing, in his intercourse with natives
of India, the smattering of Portuguese which he had
acquired, when a lad, in Brazil.

20 The new sovereign was now called upon to fulfil the
engagements into which he had entered with his allies.
A conference was held at the house of Jugget Seit, the
great banker, for the purpose of making the necessary
arrangements. Omichund came thither, fully believing

25 himself to stand high in the favour of Clive, who,
with dissimulation surpassing even the dissimulation of
Bengal, had up to that day treated him with un-
diminished kindness. The white treaty was produced
and read. Clive then turned to Mr Scrafton, one of

30 the servants of the Company, and said in English, " It
is now time to undeceive Omichund." "Omichund,"

ESSAY ON CLIVE 59

said Mr Scrafton in Hindostanee, " the red treaty is a
trick. You are to have nothing." Omichund fell back
insensible into the arms of his attendants. He revived ;
but his mind was irreparably ruined. Clive, who,
though little troubled by scruples of conscience in his 5
dealings with Indian politicans, was not inhuman, seems
to have been touched. He saw Omichund a few days
later, spoke to him kindly, advised him to make a
pilgrimage to one of the great temples of India, in the
hope that change of scene might restore his health, 10
and was even disposed, notwithstanding all that had
passed, again to employ him in the public service.
But from the moment of that sudden shock, the
unhappy man sank gradually into idiocy. He who
had formerly been distinguished by the strength of his 15
understanding and the simplicity of his habits, now
squandered the remains of his fortune on childish
trinkets, and loved to exhibit himself dressed in rich
garments, and hung with precious stones. In this
abject state he languished a few months, and then 20
died.

We should not think it necessary to offer any remarks
for the purpose of directing the judgment of our readers,
with respect to this transaction, had not Sir John
Malcolm undertaken to defend it in all its parts. He 25
regrets, indeed, that it was necessary to employ means
so liable to abuse as forgery; but he will not admit
that any blame attaches to those who deceived the
deceiver. He thinks that the English were not bound
to keep faith with one who kept no faith with them, 30
and that, if they had fulfilled their engagements with

60 ESSAY ON CLIVE

the wily Bengalee, so signal an example of successful
treason would have produced a crowd of imitators.
Now, we will not discuss this point on any rigid
principles of morality. Indeed, it is quite unnecessary
5 to do so : for, looking at the question as a question
of expediency in the lowest sense of the word, and
using no arguments but such as Machiavelli might
have employed in his conferences with Borgia, we are
convinced that Clive was altogether in the wrong, and

10 that he committed, not merely a crime, but a blunder.
That honesty is the best policy is a maxim which we
firmly believe to be generally correct, even with respect
to the temporal interest of individuals ; but with respect
to societies, the rule is subject to still fewer exceptions,

15 and that for this reason, that the life of societies is
longer than the life of individuals. It is possible to
mention men who have owed great worldly prosperity
to breaches of private faith; but we doubt whether
it be possible to mention a state which has on the

20 whole been a gainer by a breach of public faith. The
entire history of British India is an illustration of the
great truth, that it is not prudent to oppose perfidy to
perfidy, and that the most efficient weapon with which
men can encounter falsehood is truth. During a long

25 course of years, the English rulers of India, surrounded
by allies and enemies whom no engagement could
bind, have generally acted with sincerity and upright-
ness; and the event has proved that sincerity and
uprightness are wisdom. English valour and English

30 intelligence have done less to extend and to preserve
our Oriental empire than English veracity. All that

ESSAY ON CLIVE 61

we could have gained by imitating the doublings, the
evasions, the fictions, the perjuries which have been
employed against us, is as nothing, when compared
with what we have gained by being the one power in
India on whose word reliance can be placed. No oath 5
which superstition can devise, no hostage however
precious, inspires a hundredth part of the confidence
which is produced by the "yea, yea," and "nay, nay,"
of a British envoy. No fastness, however strong by
art or nature, gives to its inmates a security like that 10
enjoyed by the chief who, passing through the territories
of powerful and deadly enemies, is armed with the
British guarantee. The mightiest princes of the East
can scarcely, by the offer of enormous usury, draw forth
any portion of the wealth which is concealed under the 15
hearths of their subjects. The British Government
offers little more than four per cent. ; and avarice hastens
to bring forth tens of millions of rupees from its most
secret repositories. A hostile monarch may promise
mountains of gold to our sepoys, on condition that 20
they will desert the standard of the Company. The
Company promises only a moderate pension after a
long service. But every sepoy knows that the promise
of the Company will be kept ; he knows that if he lives
a hundred years his rice and salt are as secure as the 25
salary of the Governor-General: and he knows that
there is not another state in India which would not,
in spite of the most solemn vows, leave him to die of
hunger in a ditch as soon as he had ceased to be
useful. The greatest advantage which a government 30
can possess is to be the one trustworthy government

62 ESSAY ON CLIVE

in the midst of governments which nobody can trust.
This advantage we enjoy in Asia. Had we acted
during the last two generations on the principles which
Sir John Malcolm appears to have considered as sound,
5 had we as often as we had to deal with people like
Omichund, retaliated by lying and forging, and break-
ing faith, after their fashion, it is our firm belief that no
courage or capacity could have upheld our empire.
Sir John Malcolm admits that Clive's breach of faith

10 could be justified only by the strongest necessity. As
we think that breach of faith not only unnecessary, but
most inexpedient, we need hardly say that we altogether
condemn it.

Omichund was not the only victim of the revolution.

15 Surajah Dowlah was taken a few days after his flight, and
was brought before Meer Jafner. There he flung him-
self on the ground in convulsions of fear, and with tears
and loud cries implored the mercy which he had never
shown. Meer Jaffier hesitated ; but his son Meeran, a

20 youth of seventeen, who in feebleness of brain and
savageness of nature greatly resembled the wretched
captive, was implacable. Surajah Dowlah was led into
a secret chamber, to which in a short time the ministers
of death were sent. In this act the English bore no

25 part ; and Meer Jaffier understood so much of their

feelings that he thought it necessary to apologise to

them for having avenged them on their most malignant

enemy.

The shower of wealth now fell copiously on the Com-

30 pany and its servants. A sum of eight hundred thousand
pounds sterling, in coined silver, was sent down the

ESSAY ON CLIVE 63

river from Moorshedabad to Fort William. The fleet
which conveyed this treasure consisted of more than a
hundred boats, and performed its triumphal voyage with
flags flying and music playing. Calcutta, which a few
months before had been desolate, was now more prosper- 5
ous than ever. Trade revived ; and the signs of afflu-
ence appeared in every English house. As to Clive,
there was no limit to his acquisitions but his own mode-
ration. The treasury of Bengal was thrown open to him.
There were piled up, after the usage of Indian princes, 10
immense masses of coin, among which might not seldom
be detected the florins and byzants with which, before
any European ship had turned the Cape of Good Hope,
the Venetians purchased the stuffs and spices of the
East. Clive walked between heaps of gold and silver, 15
crowned with rubies and diamonds, and was at liberty
to help himself. He accepted between two and three
hundred thousand pounds.

The pecuniary transactions between Meer Jaffier
and Clive were sixteen years later condemned by the 20
public voice, and severely criticised in Parliament. They
are vehemently defended by Sir John Malcolm. The
accusers of the victorious general represented his gains
as the wages of corruption, or as plunder extorted at the
point of the sword from a helpless ally. The biographer, 25
on the other hand, considers these great acquisitions as
free gifts, honourable alike to the donor and to the
receiver, and compares them to the rewards bestowed
by foreign powers on Marlborough, on Nelson, and on
Wellington. It had always, he says, been customary in 30
the East to give and receive presents ; and there was, as

64 ESSAY ON CLIVE

yet, no Act of Parliament positively prohibiting English
functionaries in India from profiting by this Asiatic
usage. This reasoning, we own, does not quite satisfy us.
We do not suspect Clive of selling the interests of his
5 employers or his country ; but we cannot acquit him of
having done what, if not in itself evil, was yet of evil
example. Nothing is more clear than that a general
ought to be the servant of his own government, and of
no other. It follows that whatever rewards he receives

10 for his services ought to be given either by his own
government, or with the full knowledge and approbation
of his own government. This rule ought to be strictly
maintained even with respect to the merest bauble,
with respect to a cross, a medal, or a yard of coloured

15 riband. But how can any government be well served,
if those who command its forces are at liberty, without its
permission, without its privity, to accept princely fortunes
from its allies ? It is idle to say that there was then no Act
of Parliament prohibiting the practice of taking presents

20 from Asiatic sovereigns. It is not on the Act which was
passed at a later period for the purpose of preventing any
such taking of presents, but on grounds which were valid
before that Act was passed, on grounds of common law
and commonsense, that we arraign the conduct of Clive.

25 There is no Act that we know of prohibiting the Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs from being in the pay of conti-
nental powers, but it is not the less true that a Secretary
who should receive a secret pension from France would
grossly violate his duty, and would deserve severe punish-

30 ment. Sir John Malcolm compares the conduct of
Clive with that of the Duke of Wellington. Suppose, —

ESSAY ON CLIVE 65

and we beg pardon for putting such a supposition even
for the sake of argument,— that the Duke of Wellington
had, after the campaign of 1815, and while he commanded
the army of occupation in France, privately accepted
two hundred thousand pounds from Lewis the Eighteenth, 5
as a mark of gratitude for the great services which his
Grace had rendered to the House of Bourbon; what
would be thought of such a transaction ? Yet the statute-
book no more forbids the taking of presents in Europe
now than it forbade the taking of presents in Asia then. 10

At the same time, it must be admitted that, in Clive's
case, there were many extenuating circumstances. He
considered himself as the general, not of the Crown, but
of the Company. The Company had, by implication at
least, authorised its agents to enrich themselves by means 15
of the liberality of the native princes, and by other means
still more objectionable. It was hardly to be expected
that the servant should entertain stripter notions of his
duty than were entertained by his masters. Though
Clive did not distinctly acquaint his employers with 20
what had taken place and request their sanction, he did
not, on the other hand, by studied concealment, show
that he was conscious of having done wrong. On the
contrary, he avowed with the greatest openness that the
Nabob's bounty had raised him to affluence. Lastly, 25
though we think that he ought not in such a way to have
taken anything, we must admit that he deserves praise
for having taken so little. He accepted twenty lacs of
rupees. It would have cost him only a word to make
the twenty forty. It was a very easy exercise of virtue 30
to declaim in England against Clive's rapacity ; but not

66 ESSAY ON CLIVE

one in a hundred of his accusers would have shown so
much self-command in the treasury of Moorshedabad.

Meer Jaffier could be upheld on the throne only by
the hand which had placed him on it. He was not,
5 indeed, a mere boy ; nor had he been so unfortunate as
to be born in the purple. He was not therefore quite
so imbecile or quite so depraved as his predecessor had
been. But he had none of the talents or virtues which
his post required; and his son and heir, Meeran, was

10 another Surajah Dowlah. The recent revolution had
unsettled the minds of men. Many chiefs were in open
insurrection against the new Nabob. The viceroy of
the rich and powerful province of Oude, who, like the
other viceroys of the Mogul, was now in truth an inde-

15 pendent sovereign, menaced Bengal with invasion. No-
thing but the talents and authority of Clive could
support the tottering government. While things were
in this state, a ship arrived with despatches which had
been written at the India House before the news of the

20 battle of Plassey had reached London. The Directors
had determined to place the English settlements in
Bengal under a government constituted in the most
cumbjpus and absurd manner ; and to make the matter
worse, no place in the arrangement was assigned to

25 Clive. The persons who were selected to form this new
government, greatly to their honour, took on themselves
the responsibility of disobeying these preposterous orders,
and invited Clive to exercise the supreme authority.
He consented ; and it soon appeared that the servants

30 of the Company had only anticipated the wishes of their
employers. The Directors, on receiving news of Clive's

ESSAY ON CLIVE 67

brilliant success, instantly appointed him governor of
their possessions in Bengal, with the highest marks of
gratitude and esteem. His power was now boundless,
and far surpassed even that which Dupleix had attained
in the south of India. Meer Jaffier regarded him with 5
slavish awe. On one occasion, the Nabob spoke with
severity to a native chief of high rank, whose followers
had been engaged in a brawl with some of the Company's
sepoys. "Are you yet to learn," he said, "who that
Colonel Clive is, and in what station God has placed 10
him ? " The chief, who, as a famous jester and an old
friend of Meer Jaffier, could venture to take liberties,
answered, " I affront the Colonel ! I, who never get up
in the morning without making three low bows to his
jackass ! " This was hardly an exaggeration. Europeans 15
and natives were alike at Clive's feet. The English
regarded him as the only man who could force Meer
Jaffier to keep his engagements with them. Meer Jaffier
regarded him as the only man who could protect the
new dynasty against turbulent subjects and encroaching 20
neighbours.

It is but justice to say that Clive used his power ably
and vigorously for the advantage of his country. He
sent forth an expedition against the tract lying to the
north of the Carnatic. In this tract the French still had 25
the ascendency ; and it was important to dislodge them.
The conduct of the enterprise was intrusted to an officer
of the name of Forde, who was then little known, but in
whom the keen eye of the governor had detected military
talents of a high order. The success of the expedition 30
was rapid and splendid.

68 ESSAY ON CLIVE

While a considerable part of the army of Bengal was
thus engaged at a distance, a new and formidable danger
menaced the western frontier. The Great Mogul was
a prisoner at Delhi in the hands of a subject. His
5 eldest son, named Shah Alum, destined to be, during
many years, the sport of adverse fortune, and to be a
tool in the hands, first of the Mahrattas, and then of the
English, had fled from the palace of his father. His
birth was still revered in India. Some powerful princes,

10 the Nabob of Oude in particular, were inclined to favour
him. Shah Alum found it easy to draw to his standard
great numbers of the military adventurers with whom
every part of the country swarmed. An army of forty
thousand men, of various races and religions, Mahrattas,

15 Rohillas, Jauts, and Afghans, were speedily assembled
round him ; and he formed the design of overthrowing
the upstart whom the English had elevated to a throne,
and of establishing his own authority throughout Bengal
Orissa, and Bahar.

20 Meer Jaffier's terror was extreme ; and the only
expedient which occurred to him was to purchase, by
the payment of a large sum of money, an accommodation
with Shah Alum. This expedient had been repeatedly
employed by those who, before him, had ruled the rich

25 and unwarlike provinces near the mouth of the Ganges.
But Clive treated the suggestion with a scorn worthy
of his strong sense and dauntless courage. "If you do
this," he wrote, " you will have the Nabob of Oude, the
Mahrattas, and many more, come from all parts of the

30 confines of your country, who will bully you out of money
till you have none left in your treasury. I beg your

ESSAY ON CLIVE 69

Excellency will rely on the fidelity of the English, and
of those troops which are attached to you." He wrote
in a similar strain to the governor of Patna, a brave
native soldier whom he highly esteemed. " Come to
no terms; defend your city to the last. Rest assured 5
that the English are staunch and firm friends, and that
they never desert a cause in which they have once taken
a part."

He kept his word. Shah Alum had invested Patna,
and was on the point of proceeding to storm, when he 10
learned that the Colonel was advancing by forced
marches. The whole army which was approaching
consisted of only four hundred and fifty Europeans and
two thousand five hundred sepoys. But Clive and
his Englishmen were now objects of dread over all the 15
East. As soon as his advance guard appeared, the
besiegers fled before him. A few French adventurers
who were about the person of the prince advised him
to try the chance of battle ; but in vain. In a few days
this great army, which had been regarded with so much 20
uneasiness by the court of Moorshedabad, melted away
before the mere terror of the British name.

The conqueror returned in triumph to Fort William.
The joy of Meer Jaffier was as unbounded as his fears
had been, and led him to bestow on his preserver a 25
princely token of gratitude. The quit-rent which the
East India Company were bound to pay to the Nabob
for the extensive lands held by them to the south of
Calcutta amounted to near thirty thousand pounds
sterling a year. The whole of this splendid estate, 30
sufficient to support with dignity the highest rank of

70 ESSAY ON CLIVE

the British peerage, was now conferred on Clive for
life.

This present we think Clive justified in accepting.
It was a present which, from its very nature, could be

5 no secret. In fact, the Company itself was his tenant,
and, by its acquiescence, signified its approbation of
Meer Jaffier's grant.

But the gratitude of Meer Jaffier did not last long.
He had for some time felt that the powerful ally who

10 had set him up, might pull him down, and had been
looking round for support against the formidable strength
by which he had himself been hitherto supported. He
knew that it would be impossible to find among the
natives of India any force which would look the

15 Colonel's little army in the face. The French power
in Bengal was extinct. But the fame of the Dutch
had anciently been great in the Eastern seas; and it
was not yet distinctly known in Asia how much the
power of Holland had declined in Europe. Secret

20 communications passed between the court of Moorsheda-
bad and the Dutch factory at Chinsurah; and urgent
letters were sent from Chinsurah, exhorting the govern-
ment of Batavia to fit out an expedition which might
balance the power of the English in Bengal. The

25 authorities of Batavia, eager to extend the influence
of their country, and still more eager to obtain for
themselves a share of the wealth which had recently
raised so many English adventurers to opulence,
equipped a powerful armament. Seven large ships

30 from Java arrived unexpectedly in the Hoogley. The
military force on board amounted to fifteen hundred

ESSAY ON CLIVE 7l

men, of whom about one half were Europeans. The
enterprise was well timed. Clive had sent such large
detachments to oppose the French in the Carnatic that
his army was now inferior in number to that of the
Dutch. He knew that Meer Jaffler secretly favoured 5
the invaders. He knew that he took on himself a
serious responsibility if he attacked the forces of a
friendly power; that the English ministers could not
wish to see a war with Holland added to that in which
they were already engaged with France ; that they might 10
disavow his acts; that they might punish him. He
had recently remitted a great part of his fortune to
Europe, through the Dutch East India Company ; and
he had therefore a strong interest in avoiding any quarrel.
But he was satisfied that, if he suffered the Batavian 15
armament to pass up the river and to join the garrison
of Chinsurah, Meer Jaffier would throw himself into the
arms of these new allies, and that the English ascendency
in Bengal would be exposed to most serious danger.
He took his resolution with characteristic boldness, and 20
was most ably seconded by his officers, particularly by
Colonel Forde, to whom the most important part of the
operations was intrusted. The Dutch attempted to
force a passage. The English encountered them both
by land and water. On both elements the enemy had 25
a great superiority of force. On both they were signally
defeated. Their ships were taken. Their troops were
put to a total rout. Almost all the European soldiers,
who constituted the main strength of the invading army,
were killed or taken. The conquerors sat down before 30
Chinsurah; and the chiefs of that settlement, now

72 ESSAY ON CLIVE

thoroughly humbled, consented to the terms which
Clive dictated. They engaged to build no fortifications,
and to raise no troops beyond a small force necessary
for the police of their factories ; and it was distinctly
5 provided that any violation of these covenants should
be punished with instant expulsion from Bengal.

Three months after this great victory, Clive sailed for
England. At home, honours and rewards awaited him,
not indeed equal to his claims or to his ambition, but still

10 such as, when his age, his rank in the army, and his
original place in society are considered, must be pro-
nounced rare and splendid. He was raised to the Irish
peerage, and encouraged to expect an English title.
George the Third, who had just ascended the throne,

15 received him with great distinction. The ministers
paid him marked attention; and Pitt, whose influence
in the House of Commons and in the country was un-
bounded, was eager to mark his regard for one whose
exploits had contributed so much to the lustre of that

20 memorable period. The great orator had already in
Parliament described Clive as a heaven-born general, as
a man who, bred to the labour of the desk, had dis-
played a military genius which might excite the admira-
tion of the King of Prussia. There were then no re-

25 porters in the gallery; but these words, emphatically
spoken by the first statesman of the age, had passed
from mouth to mouth, had been transmitted to Clive in
Bengal, and had greatly delighted and flattered him.
Indeed, since the death of Wolfe, Clive was the only

30 English general of whom his countrymen had much
reason to be proud. The Duke of Cumberland had

ESSAY ON CLIVE 73

been generally unfortunate; and his single victory,
having been gained over his countrymen and used with
merciless severity, had been more fatal to his popularity
than his many defeats. Conway, versed in the learning
of his profession, and personally courageous, wanted 5
vigour and capacity. Granby, honest, generous, and
brave as a lion, had neither science nor genius.
Sackville, inferior in knowledge and abilities to none of
his contemporaries, had incurred, unjustly as we believe,
the imputation most fatal to the character of a soldier. 10
It was under the command of a foreign general that the
British had triumphed at Minden and Warburg. The
people therefore, as was natural, greeted with pride and
delight a captain of their own, whose native courage and
self-taught skill had placed him on a level with the 15
great tacticians of Germany.

The wealth of Clive was such as enabled him to vie
with the first grandees of England. There remains
proof that he had remitted more than a hundred and
eighty thousand pounds through the Dutch East India 20
Company, and more than forty thousand pounds through
the English Company. The amount which he had sent
home through private houses was also considerable.
He had invested great sums in jewels, then a very
common mode of remittance from India. His purchases 25
of diamonds, at Madras alone, amounted to twenty-five
thousand pounds. Besides a great mass of ready money,
he had his Indian estate, valued by himself at twenty-
seven thousand a year. His whole annual income, in
the opinion of Sir John Malcolm, who is desirous to 30
state it as low as possible, exceeded forty thousand

74 ESSAY ON CLIVE

pounds; and incomes of forty thousand pounds at the
time of the accession of George the Third were at least as
rare as incomes of a hundred thousand pounds now. We
may safely affirm that no Englishman who started with
5 nothing has ever, in any line of life, created such a
fortune at the early age of thirty-four.

It would be unjust not to add that Clive made a
creditable use of his riches. As soon as the battle of
Plassey had laid the foundation of his fortune, he sent ten

10 thousand pounds to his sisters, bestowed as much more
on other poor friends and relations, ordered his agent to
pay eight hundred a year to his parents, and to insist that
they should keep a carriage, and settled five hundred a year
on his old commander Lawrence, whose means were very

15 slender. The whole sum which Clive expended in this
manner may be calculated at fifty thousand pounds.

He now set himself to cultivate Parliamentary interest.
His purchases of land seem to have been made in a great
measure with that view, and, after the general election

20 of 1761, he found himself in the House of Commons,
at the head of a body of dependants whose support must
have been important to any administration. In English
politics, however, he did not take a prominent part.
His first attachments, as we have seen, were to Mr Fox ;

25 at a later period he was attracted by the genius and suc-
cess of Mr Pitt ; but finally he connected himself in the
closest manner with George Grenville. Early in the
session of 1764, when the illegal and impolitic persecu-
tion of that worthless demagogue Wilkes had strongly

30 excited the public mind, the town was amused by an
anecdote, which we have seen in some unpublished

ESSAY ON CLIVE 75

memoirs of Horace Walpole. Old Mr Richard Clive,
who, since his son's elevation, had been introduced into
society for which his former habits had not well fitted
him, presented himself at the levee. The King asked
him where Lord Clive was. " He will be in town very 5
soon," said the old gentleman, loud enough to be heard
by the whole circle, " and then your Majesty will have
another vote."

But in truth all Clive's views were directed towards
the country in which he had so eminently distinguished 10
himself as a soldier and a statesman ; and it was by con-
siderations relating to India that his conduct as a public
man in England was regulated. The power of the
Company, though an anomaly, is in our time, we are
firmly persuaded, a beneficial anomaly. In the time of 15
Clive, it was not merely an anomaly, but a nuisance.
There was no Board of Control. The Directors were
for the most part mere traders, ignorant of general
politics, ignorant of the peculiarities of the empire which
had strangely become subject to them. The Court of 20
Proprietors, wherever it chose to interfere, was able to
have its way. That Court was more numerous, as well
as more powerful, than at present ; for then every share
of five hundred pounds conferred a vote. The meetings
were large, stormy, even riotous, the debates indecently 25
virulent. All the turbulence of a Westminster election,
all the trickery and corruption of a Grampound election,
disgraced the proceedings of this assembly on questions
of the most solemn importance. Fictitious votes were
manufactured on a gigantic scale. Clive himself laid 30
out a hundred thousand pounds in the purchase of stock,

76 ESSAY ON CLIVE

which he then divided among nominal proprietors on
whom he could depend, and whom he brought down in
his train to every discussion and every ballot. Others
did the same, though not to quite so enormous an
5 extent.

The interest taken by the public of England in Indian
questions was then far greater than at present, and the
reason is obvious. At present a writer enters the service
young ; he climbs slowly ; he is fortunate if, at forty-

10 five, he can return to his country with an annuity of a
thousand a year, and with savings amounting to thirty
thousand pounds. A great quantity of wealth is made
by English functionaries in India ; but no single func-
tionary makes a very large fortune, and what is made is

15 slowly, hardly, and honestly earned. Only four or five
high political offices are reserved for public men from
England. The residencies, the secretaryships, the seats
in the boards of revenue and in the Sudder courts are
all filled by men who have given the best years of life to

20 the service of the Company ; nor can any talents how-
ever splendid or any connections however powerful obtain
those lucrative posts for any person who has not entered
by the regular door, and mounted by the regular grada-
tions. Seventy years ago, less money was brought home

25 from the East than in our time. But it was divided
among a very much smaller number of persons, and
immense sums were often accumulated in a few months.
Any Englishman, whatever his age might be, might
hope to be one of the lucky emigrants. If he made a

30 good speech in Leadenhall Street, or published a clever
pamphlet in defence of the chairman, he might be sent

ESSAY ON CLIVE 77

out in the Company's service, and might return in three
or four years as rich as Pigot or as Clive. Thus the
India House was a lottery-office, which invited everybody
to take a chance, and held out ducal fortunes as the prizes
destined for the lucky few. As soon as it was known 5
that there was a part of the world where a lieutenant-
colonel had one morning received as a present an estate
as large as that of the Earl of Bath or the Marquess of
Rockingham, and where it seemed that such a trifle as
ten or twenty thousand pounds was to be had by any 10
British functionary for the asking, society began to exhibit
all the symptoms of the South Sea year, a feverish excite-
ment, an ungovernable impatience to be rich, a contempt
for slow, sure, and moderate gains.

At the head of the preponderating party in the India 15
House, had long stood a powerful, able, and ambitious
director of the name of Sulivan. He had conceived a
strong jealousy of Clive, and remembered with bitter-
ness the audacity with which the late governor of Bengal
had repeatedly set at nought the authority of the distant 20
Directors of the Company. An apparent reconciliation
took place after Clive's arrival; but enmity remained
deeply rooted in the hearts of both. The whole body
of Directors was then chosen annually. At the election
of 1763, Clive attempted to break down the power of 25
the dominant faction. The contest was carried on
with a violence which he describes as tremendous.
Sulivan was victorious, and hastened to take his revenge.
The grant of rent which Clive had received from Meer
Jaffier was, in the opinion of the best English lawyers, 30
valid. It had been made by exactly the same authority

78 ESSAY ON CLIVE

from which the Company had received their chief
possessions in Bengal, and the Company had long
acquiesced in it. The Directors, however, most un-
justly determined to confiscate it, and Clive was forced
5 to file a bill in chancery against them.

But a great and sudden turn in affairs was at hand.
Every ship from Bengal had for some time brought
alarming tidings. The internal misgovernment of the
province had reached such a point that it could go no

10 further. What, indeed, was to be expected from a body
of public servants exposed to temptation such that, as
Clive once said, flesh and blood could not bear it,
armed with irresistible power, and responsible only to
the corrupt, turbulent, distracted, ill-informed Company,

15 situated at such a distance that the average interval
between the sending of a despatch and the receipt of
an answer was above a year and a half? Accordingly,
during the five years which followed the departure of
Clive from Bengal, the misgovernment of the English

20 was carried to a point such as seems hardly compatible
with the very existence of society. The Roman pro-
consul, who, in a year or two, squeezed out of a province
the means of rearing marble palaces and baths on the
shores of Campania, of drinking from amber, of feasting

25 on singing birds, of exhibiting armies of gladiators and
flocks of camelopards ; the Spanish viceroy, who, leaving
behind him the curses of Mexico or Lima, entered
Madrid with a long train of gilded coaches, and of
sumpter-horses trapped and shod with silver, were now

30 outdone. Cruelty, indeed, properly so called, was not
among the vices of the servants of the Company. But

ESSAY ON CLIVE 79

cruelty itself could hardly have produced greater evils
than sprang from their unprincipled eagerness to be
rich. They pulled down their creature, Meer Jaffier.
They set up in his place another Nabob, named Meer
Cossim. But Meer Cossim had parts and a will ; and, 5
though sufficiently inclined to oppress his subjects
himself, he could not bear to see them ground to the
dust by oppressions which yielded him no profit, nay,
which destroyed his revenue in the very source. The
English accordingly pulled down Meer Cossim, and set 10
up Meer Jaffier again ; and Meer Cossim, after reveng-
ing himself by a massacre surpassing in atrocity that
of the Black Hole, fled to the dominions of the Nabob
of Oude. At every one of these revolutions, the new
prince divided among his foreign masters whatever 15
could be scraped together in the treasury of his fallen
predecessor. The immense population of his dominions
was given up as a prey to those who had made him a
sovereign, and who could unmake him. The servants
of the Company obtained, not for their employers, 20
but for themselves, a monopoly of almost the whole
internal trade. They forced the natives to buy dear
and to sell cheap. They insulted with impunity the
tribunals, the police, and the fiscal authorities of the
country. They covered with their protection a set of 25
native dependants who ranged through the provinces,
spreading desolation and terror wherever they appeared.
Every servant of a British factor was armed with all
the power of his master; and his master was armed
with all the power of the Company. Enormous fortunes 30
were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty

8o ESSAY ON CLIVE

millions of human beings were reduced to the extremity
of wretchedness. They had been accustomed to live
under tyranny, but never under tyranny like this. They
found the little finger of the Company thicker than the
5 loins of Surajah Dowlah. Under their old masters they
had at least one resource : when the evil became in-
supportable, the people rose and pulled down the
government. But the English government was not to
be so shaken off. That government, oppressive as the

10 most oppressive form of barbarian despotism, was strong
with all the strength of civilisation. It resembled the
government of evil Genii, rather than the government
of human tyrants. Even despair could not inspire the
soft Bengalee with courage to confront men of English

15 breed, the hereditary nobility of mankind, whose skill
and valour had so often triumphed in spite of tenfold
odds. The unhappy race never attempted resistance.
Sometimes they submitted in patient misery. Some-
times they fled from the .white man, as their fathers

20 had been used to fly from the Mahratta ; and the
palanquin of the English traveller was often carried
through silent villages and towns, which the report of
his approach had made desolate.

The foreign lords of Bengal were naturally objects of

25 hatred to all the neighbouring powers ; and to all the
haughty race presented a dauntless front. The English
armies, everywhere outnumbered, were everywhere vic-
torious. A succession of commanders, formed in the
school of Clive, still maintained the fame of their

30 country. "It must be acknowledged," says the Mussul-
man historian of those times, " that this nation's presence

ESSAY ON CLIVE 81

of mind, firmness of temper, and undaunted bravery,
are past all question. They join the most resolute
courage to the most cautious prudence ; nor have they
their equals in the art of ranging themselves in battle
array and fighting in order. If to so many military 5
qualifications they knew how to join the arts of govern-
ment, if they exerted as much ingenuity and solicitude
in relieving the people of God, as they do in whatever
concerns their military affairs, no nation in the world
would be preferable to them, or worthier of command. 10
But the people under their dominion groan everywhere,
and are reduced to poverty and distress. Oh God !
come to the assistance of thine afflicted servants, and
deliver them from the oppressions which they suffer."

It was impossible, however, that even the military 15
establishment should long continue exempt from the
vices which pervaded every other part of the government.
Rapacity, luxury, and the spirit of insubordination spread
from the civil service to the officers of the army, and from
the officers to the soldiers. The evil continued to grow 20
till every mess-room became the seat of conspiracy and
cabal, and till the sepoys could be kept in order only by
wholesale executions.

At length the state of things in Bengal began to excite
uneasiness at home. A succession of revolutions; a 25
disorganised administration j the natives pillaged, yet the
Company not enriched ; every fleet bringing back fortun-
ate adventurers who were able to purchase manors and to
build stately dwellings, yet bringing back also alarming
accounts of the financial prospects of the government ; 30
war on the frontiers ; disaffection in the army ; the
F

82 ESSAY ON CLIVE

national character disgraced by excesses resembling
those of Verres and Pizarro; such was the spectacle
which dismayed those who were conversant with Indian
affairs. The general cry was that Clive, and Clive alone,
5 could save the empire which he had founded.

This feeling manifested itself in the strongest manner
at a very full General Court of Proprietors. Men of all
parties, forgetting their feuds and trembling for their
dividends, exclaimed that Clive was the man whom the

10 crisis required, that the oppressive proceedings which
had been adopted respecting his estate ought to be
dropped, and that he ought to be entreated to return to
India.

Clive rose. As to his estate, he said, he would make

15 such propositions to the Directors, as would, he trusted,
lead to an amicable settlement. But there was a still
greater difficulty. It was proper to tell them that he
never would undertake the government of Bengal while
his enemy Sulivan was chairman of the Company. The

20 tumult was violent. Sulivan could scarcely obtain a
hearing. An overwhelming majority of the assembly
was on dive's side. Sulivan wished to try the result of
a ballot. But, according to the bye-laws of the Company,
there can be no ballot except on a requisition signed by

25 nine proprietors ; and, though hundreds were present,
nine persons could not be found to set their hands to
such a requisition.

Clive was in consequence nominated Governor and
Commander-in-chief of the British possessions in Bengal.

30 But he adhered to his declaration, and refused to enter
on his office till the event of the next election of Directors

ESSAY ON CLIVE 83

should be known. The contest was obstinate ; but Give
triumphed. Sulivan, lately absolute master of the India
House, was within a vote of losing his own seat ; and
both the chairman and the deputy-chairman were friends
of the new governor. 5

Such were the circumstances under which Lord dive
sailed for the third and last time to India. In May
1765, he reached Calcutta; and he found the whole
machine of government even more fearfully disorganised
than he had anticipated. Meer Jaffier, who had some 10
time before lost his eldest son Meeran, had died while
Clive was on his voyage out. The English functionaries
at Calcutta had already received from home strict orders
not to accept presents from the native princes. But,
eager for gain, and unaccustomed to respect the com- 15
mands of their distant, ignorant, and negligent masters,
they again set up the throne of Bengal to sale. About
one hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling was
distributed among nine of the most powerful servants of
the Company ; and, in consideration of this bribe, an 20
infant son of the deceased Nabob was placed on the
seat of his father. The news of the ignominious bargain
met Clive on his arrival. In a private letter, written
immediately after his landing, to an intimate friend, he
poured out his feelings in language, which, proceeding 25
from a man so daring, so resolute, and so little given to
theatrical display of sentiment, seems to us singularly
touching. " Alas ! " he says, " how is the English name
sunk ! I could not avoid paying the tribute of a few
tears to the departed and lost fame of the British nation 30
—irrecoverably so, I fear. However, I do declare, by

84 ESSAY ON CLIVE

that great Being who is the searcher of all hearts, and to
whom we must be accountable if there be a hereafter,
that I am come out with a mind superior to all corrup-
tion, and that I am determined to destroy these great
5 and growing evils, or perish in the attempt."

The Council met, and Clive stated to them his full
determination to make a thorough reform, and to use
for that purpose the whole of the ample authority, civil
and military, which had been confided to him. John-

10 stone, one of the boldest and worst men in the assembly,
made some show of opposition. Clive interrupted him,
and haughtily demanded whether he meant to question
the power of the new government. Johnstone was
cowed, and disclaimed any such intention. All the

15 faces round the board grew long and pale; and not
another syllable of dissent was uttered.

Clive redeemed his pledge. He remained in India
about a year and a half; and in that short time effected
one of the most extensive, difficult, and salutary reforms

20 that ever was accomplished by any statesman. This
was the part of his life on which he afterwards looked
back with most pride. He had it in his power to triple
his already splendid fortune ; to connive at abuses while
pretending to remove them ; to conciliate the goodwill

25 of all the English in Bengal, by giving up to their rapacity
a helpless and timid race, who knew not where lay the
island which sent forth their oppressors, and whose
complaints had little chance of being heard across
fifteen thousand miles of ocean. He knew that, if he

30 applied himself in earnest to the work of reformation,
he should raise every bad passiou in arms against him.

ESSAY ON CLIVE 85

He knew how unscrupulous, how implacable, would be
the hatred of those ravenous adventurers who, having
counted on accumulating in a few months fortunes
sufficient to support peerages, should find all their hopes
frustrated. But he had chosen the good part ; and he 5
called up all the force of his mind for a battle far harder
than that of Plassey. At first success seemed hopeless ;
but soon all obstacles began to bend before that iron
courage and that vehement will. The receiving of pre-
sents from the natives was rigidly prohibited. The private 10
trade of the servants of the Company was put down. The
whole settlement seemed to be set, as one man, against
these measures. But the inexorable governor declared
that, if he could not find support at Fort William, he would
procure it elsewhere, and sent for some civil servants 15
from Madras to assist him in carrying on the administra-
tion. The most factious of his opponents he turned out
of their offices. The rest submitted to what was inevitable ;
and in a very short time all resistance was quelled.

But Clive was far too wise a man not to see that the 20
recent abuses were partly to be ascribed to a cause
which could not fail to produce similar abuses, as soon
as the pressure of his strong hand was withdrawn. The
Company had followed a mistaken policy with respect
to the remuneration of its servants. The salaries were 25
too low to afford even those indulgences which are
necessary to the health and comfort of Europeans in a
tropical climate. To lay by a rupee from such scanty
pay was impossible. It could not be supposed that
men of even average abilities would consent to pass 30
the best years of life in exile, under a burning sun, for no

86 ESSAY ON CLIVE

other consideration than these stinted wages. It had
accordingly been understood, from a very early period,
that the Company's agents were at liberty to enrich
themselves by their private trade. This practice had
5 been seriously injurious to the commercial interests of
the corporation. That very intelligent observer, Sir
Thomas Roe, in the reign of James the First, strongly
urged the Directors to apply a remedy to the abuse.
" Absolutely prohibit the private trade," said he ; " for

10 your business will be better done. I know this is harsh.

Men profess they come not for bare wages. But you

will take away this plea if you give great wages to their

content ; and then you know what you part from."

In spite of this excellent advice, the Company adhered

15 to the old system, paid low salaries, and connived at
the indirect gains of the agents. The pay of a member
of Council was only three hundred pounds a year. Yet
it was notorious that such a functionary could not live
in India for less than ten times that sum ; and it could

20 not be expected that he would be content to live even
handsomely in India without laying up something
against the time of his return to England. This system,
before the conquest of Bengal, might affect the amount
of the dividends payable to the proprietors, but could

25 do little harm in any other way. But the Company
was now a ruling body. Its servants might still be
called factors, junior merchants, senior merchants. But
they were in truth proconsuls, propraetors, procurators,
of extensive regions. '""They had immense power. Their

30 regular pay was universally admitted to be insufficient.
They were, by the ancient usage of the service, and by

ESSAY ON CLIVE 87

the implied permission of their employers, warranted
in enriching themselves by indirect means; and this
had been the origin of the frightful oppression and
corruption which had desolated Bengal. Clive saw
clearly that it was absurd to give men power, and to 5
require them to live in pepury. He justly concluded
that no reform could be effectual which should not be
coupled with a plan for liberally rejjuowerating the civil
servants of the Company. The Directors, he knew,
were not disposed to sanction any increase of the 10
salaries out of their own treasury. The only course
which remained open to the governor was one which ex-
posed him to much misrepresentation, but which we
think him fully justified in adopting. He appropriated
to the support of the service the monopoly of salt, which 15
has formed, down to our own time, a principal head of
Indian revenue ; and he divided the proceeds according
to a scale which seems to have been not unreasonably
fixed. He was in consequence accused by his enemies,
and has been accused by historians, of disobeying his 20
instructions, of violaUng his promises, of authorising
that very abuse which it was his special mission to
destroy, namely, the trade of the Company's servants.
But every disceiping and impartial judge will admit,
that there was really nothing in common between the 25
system which he set up and that which he was sent to
destroy. The monopoly of salt had been a source of
revenue to the Government of India before Clive was
born. It continued to be so long after his death. The
civil servants were clearly entitled to a maintenance out 30
of the revenue ; and all that Clive did was to charge a

88 ESSAY ON CLIVE

particular portion of the revenue with their maintenance.
He thus, while he put an end to the practices by which
gigantic fortunes had been rapidly accumulated, gave to
every British functionary employed in the East the
5 means of slowly, but surely, acquiring a competence.
Yet, such is the injustice of mankind, that none of those
acts which are the real stains of his life has drawn on
him so much obloquy as this measure, which was in
truth a reform necessary to the success of all his other

10 reforms.

He had quelled the opposition of the civil servants :
that of the army was more formidable. Some of the re-
trenchments which had been ordered by the Directors
affected the interests of the military service ; and a storm

15 arose, such as even Caesar would not willingly have faced.
It was no light thing to encounter the resistance of those
who held the power of the sword, in a country governed
only by the sword. Two hundred English officers engaged
in a conspiracy against the government, and determined

20 to resign their commissions on the same day, not doubt-
ing that Clive would grant any terms, rather than see
the army, on which alone the British empire in the East
rested, left without commanders. They little knew the
unconquerable spirit with which they had to deal. Clive

25 had still a few officers round his person on whom he
could rely. He sent to Fort St George for a fresh
supply. He gave commissions even to mercantile agents
who were disposed to support him at this crisis ; and he
sent orders that every officer who resigned should be

30 instantly brought up to Calcutta. The conspirators
found that they had miscalculated. The governor was

ESSAY ON CLIVE 89

inexorable. The troops were steady. The sepoys,
over whom Clive had always possessed extraordinary
influence, stood by him with unshaken fidelity. The
leaders in the plot were arrested, tried, and cashiered.
The rest, humbled and dispirited, begged to be permitted 5
to withdraw their resignations. Many of them declared
their repentance even with tears. The younger offenders
Clive treated with lenity. To the ringleaders he was in-
flexibly severe ; but his severity was pure from all taint of
private malevolence. While he sternly upheld the just 10
authority of his office, he passed by personal insults and
injuries with magnanimous disdain. One of the conspi-
rators was accused of having planned the assassination
of the governor ; but Clive would not listen to the charge.
" The officers," he said, " are Englishmen, not assassins." 15

While he reformed the civil service and established
his authority over the army, he was equally successful in
his foreign policy. His landing on Indian ground was
the signal for immediate peace. The Nabob of Oude,
with a large army, lay at that time on the frontier of 20
Bahar. He had been joined by many Afghans and
Mahrattas, and there was no small reason to expect a
general coalition of all the native powers against the
English. But the name of Clive quelled in an instant all
opposition. The enemy implored peace in the humblest 25
language, and submitted to such terms as the new
governor chose to dictate.

At the same time, the Government of Bengal was
placed on a new footing. The power of the English in
that province had hitherto been altogether undefined. 30
It was unknown to the ancient constitution of the empire,

90 ESSAY ON CLIVE

and it had been ascertained by no compact. It resembled
the power which, in the last decrepitude of the Western
Empire, was exercised over Italy by the great chiefs of
foreign mercenaries, the Ricimers and the Odoacers, who
5 put up and pulled down at their pleasure a succession
of insignificant princes, dignified with the names of Caesar
and Augustus. But as in Italy, so in India, the warlike
strangers at length found it expedient to give to a domi-
nation which had been established by arms the sanction

10 of law and ancient prescription. Theodoric thought it
politic to obtain from the distant Court of Byzantium
a commission appointing him ruler of Italy ; and Clive,
in the same manner, applied to the Court of Delhi for a
formal grant of the powers of which he already possessed

15 the reality. The Mogul was absolutely helpless; and,
though he murmured, had reason to be well pleased that
the English were disposed to give solid rupees, which he
never could have extorted from them, in exchange for a
few Persian characters which cost him nothing. A bargain

20 was speedily struck ; and the titular sovereign of Hindo-
stan issued a warrant, empowering the Company to collect
and administer the revenues of Bengal, Orissa, and
Bahar.

There was still a Nabob, who stood to the British

25 authorities in the same relation in which the last drivel-
ling Chilperics and Childerics of the Merovingian line
stood to their able and vigorous Mayors of the Palace,
to Charles Martel, and to Pepin. At one time Clive
had almost made up his mind to discard this phantom

30 altogether ; but he afterwards thought that it might be
convenient still to use the name of the Nabob, parti-

ESSAY ON CLIVE 91

cularly in dealings with other European nations. The
French, the Dutch, and the Danes, would, he conceived,
submit far more readily to the authority of the native
Prince, whom they had always been accustomed to
respect, than to that of a rival trading corporation. 5
This policy may, at that time, have been judicious.
But the pretence was soon found to be too flimsy to
impose on anybody; and it was altogether laid aside.
The heir of Meer Jaffier still resides at Moorshedabad,
the ancient capital of his house, still bears the title of 10
Nabob, is still accosted by the English as "Your
Highness," and is still suffered to retain a portion of the
regal state which surrounded his ancestors. A pension
of a hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year is
annually paid to him by the government. His carriage 15
is surrounded by guards, and preceded by attendants
with silver maces. His person and his dwelling are
exempted from the ordinary authority of the ministers
of justice. But he has not the smallest share of political
power, and is, in fact, only a noble and wealthy subject 20
of the Company.

It would have been easy for Clive, during his second
administration in Bengal, to accumulate riches such as
no subject in Europe possessed. He might indeed,
without subjecting the rich inhabitants of the province 25
to any pressure beyond that to which their mildest
rulers had accustomed them, have received presents to
the amount of three hundred thousand pounds a year.
The neighbouring princes would gladly have paid any
price for his favour. But he appears to have strictly 30
adhered to the rules which he had laid down for the

92 ESSAY ON CLIVE

guidance of others. The Rajah of Benares offered him
diamonds of great value. The Nabob of Oude pressed
him to accept a large sum of money and a casket of
costly jewels. Clive courteously, but peremptorily
5 refused; and it should be observed that he made no
merit of his refusal, and that the facts did not come
to light till after his death. He kept an exact account
of his salary, of his share of the profits accruing from
the trade in salt, and of those presents which, according

10 to the fashion of the East, it would be churlish, to refuse.
Out of the sum arising from these resources, he defrayed
the expenses of his situation. The surplus he divided
among a few attached friends who had accompanied
him to India. He always boasted, and as far as we can

15 judge, he boasted with truth, that this last administration
diminished instead of increasing his fortune.

One large sum indeed he accepted. Meer Jaffier had
left him by will above sixty thousand pounds sterling in
specie and jewels : and the rules which had been recently

20 laid down extended only to presents from the living, and
did not affect legacies from the dead. Clive took the
money, but not for himself. He made the whole over
to the Company, in trust for officers and soldiers invalided
in their service. The fund which still bears his name

25 owes its origin to this princely donation.

After a stay of eighteen months, the state of his health
made it necessary for him to return to Europe. At the
close of January 1767, he quitted for the last time the
country, on whose destinies he had exercised so mighty

30 an influence.

His second return from Bengal was not, like his

ESSAY ON CLIVE 93

first, greeted by the acclamations of his countrymen.
Numerous causes were already at work which em-
bittered the remaining years of his life, and hurried
him to an untimely grave. His old enemies at the
India House were still powerful and active ; and they 5
had been reinforced by a large band of allies whose
violence far exceeded their own. The whole crew of
pilferers and oppressors from whom he had rescued
Bengal persecuted him with the implacable rancour
which belongs to such abject natures. Many of them 10
even invested their property in India stock, merely that
they might be better able to annoy the man whose
firmness had set bounds to their rapacity. Lying
newspapers were set up for no purpose but to abuse
him ; and the temper of the public mind was then such, 15
that these arts, which under ordinary circumstances
would have been ineffectual against truth and merit,
produced an extraordinary impression.

The great events which had taken place in India had
called into existence a new class of Englishmen, to 20
whom their countrymen gave the name of Nabobs.
These persons had generally sprung from families
neither ancient nor oj3U>»t; they had generally been
sent at an early age to the East; and they had there
acquired large fortunes, which they had brought back 25
to their native land. It was natural that, not having
had much opportunity of mixing with the best society,
they should exhibit some of the awkwardness and some
of the pomposity of upstarts. It was natural that,
during tlreir^ojourn in Asia, they should have acquired 30
some tastes and habits surprising, if not disgusting, to

94 ESSAY ON CLIVE

persons who never had quitted Europe. It was natural
that, having enjoyed great consideration in the East,
they should not be disposed to sink into obscurity at
home ; and as they had money, and had not birth or
5 high connection, it was natural that they should display
a little obtrusively the single advantage which they
possessed." *Wh^rever they settled there was a kind of
feud between them and the old nobility and gentry,
similar to that which raged in France between the
10 farmer-general and the marquess. This enmity to the
aristocracy long continued to distinguish the servants
of the Company. More than twenty years after the
time of which we are now speaking, Burke pronounced
that among the Jacobins might be reckoned " the East
15 Indians almost to a man, who cannot bear to find that
their present importance does not bear a proportion to
their wealth."

The Nabobs soon became a most unpopular class of

men. Some of them had in the East displayed eminent

20 talents, and rendered great services to the state ; but

at home their talents were not shown to advantage, and

their services were little known. That they had sprung

from obscurity, that they had acquired great wealth,

that they exhibited it insolently, that they spent it

25 extravagantly, that they raised the price of everything

in their neighbourhood, from fresh eggs to rotten

boroughs, that their liveries outshone those of dukes,

that their coaches were finer than that of the Lord

Mayor, that the examples of their large and ill-governed

30 households corrupted half the servants in the country,

that some of them, with all their magnificence, could

ESSAY ON CLIVE 95

not catch the tone of good society, but, in spite of the
stud and the crowd of menials, of the plate and the
Dresden china, of the venison and the Burgundy, were
still low men; these were things which excited, both
in the class from which they had sprung and in the 5
class into which they attempted to force themselves,
the bitter aversion which is the effect of mingled envy
and contempt. But when it was also rumoured that
the fortune which had enabled its possessor to eclipse
the Lord Lieutenant on the race-ground, or to carry the 10
county against the head of a house as old as Domesday
Book, had been accumulated by violating public faith,
by deposing legitimate princes, by reducing whole
provinces to beggary, all the higher and better as well
as all the low and evil parts of human nature were 15
stirred against the wretch who had obtained by guilt
and dishonour the riches which he now lavished with
arrogant^ and inelegant profusion. The unfortunate
Nabob seemed to be made up of those ^jjllfr5- against
which comedy has pointed the most merciless ridicule, 20
and of those crimes which have thrown the deepest
gloom over tragedy, of Turcaret and Nero, of Monsieur
Jourdain and Richard the Third. A tempest of execra-^
tion and derision, such as can be compared only to
that outbreak of public feeling against the Puritans 25
which took place at the time of the Restoration, burst
on the servants of the Company. The humane man
was horror-struck at the way in which they had got
their money, the thrifty man at the way in which they
spent it. The Dilettante sneered at their want of 30
taste. The Maccaroni black-balled them as vulgar

96 ESSAY ON CLIVE

fellows. Writers the most unlike in sentiment and
style, Methodists and libertines, philosophers and
buffoons, were for once on the same side. It is hardly
too much to say that, during a space of about thirty
5 years, the whole lighter literature of England was
coloured by the feelings which we have described.
Foote brought on the stage an Anglo-Indian chief,
dissjQlute, ungenerous, and tyrannical, ashamed of the
humble friends of his youth, hating the aristocracy,
10 yet childishly eager to be numbered among them,
squandering his wealth on pandars and flatterers, trick-
ing out his chairmen with th'e most costly hot-house
flowers, and astounding the ignorant with jargon about

rupees, lacs^ and jaghires. Mackenzie, with more
15 delicate humour, depicted a plain country family raised
by the Indian acquisitions of one of its members to
sudden opulence, and exciting derision by an awkward

* t

mimicry of the manners of the great. Cowper, m that
lofty expostulation which glows with the very spirit

20 of the Hebrew poets, placed the oppression of India
foremost in the list of those national crimes for which
God had punished England with years of disastrous
war, with discomfiture in her own seas, and with the
loss of her transatlantic empire. If any of our readers

25 will take the trouble to search in the dusty recesses
of circulating libraries for some novel published sixty
years ago, the chance is that the villain or sub-villain
of the story will prove to be a savage old Nabob, with
an immense fortune, a tawny complexion, a bad liver,

30 and a worse heart.

Such, as far as we can now judge, was the feeling of

ESSAY ON CLIVE 97

the country respecting Nabobs in general. And Clive
was eminently the Nabob, the ablest, the most cele-
brated, the highest in rank, the highest in fortune, of all
the fraternity. His wealth was exhibited in a manner
which could not fail to excite Qdityjj, He lived with 5
great magnificence in Berkeley Square. He reared
one palace in Shropshire and another at Claremont.
His parliamentary influence might vie with that of the
greatest families. But in all this splendour and power
envy found something to sneer at. On some of his 10
relations wealth and dignity seem to have sat as awk-
wardly as on Mackenzie's Margery Mushroom. Nor
was he himself, with all his great qualities, free from
those weaknesses which the satirises of that age repre-
sented as characteristic of his whole class. In the field, 15
indeed, his habits were remarkably simple. He was
constantly on horseback, was never seen but in his uni-
form, never wore silk, never entered a palanquin, and
was content with the plainest fare. But when he was
no longer at the head of an army, he laid aside this 20
Spartan temperance for the os_tentaJiQus luxury of a
Sybarite. Though his person was ungraceful, and though
his harsh features were redeemed from vulgar ugliness
only by their stern, dauntless, and commanding expres-
sion, he was fond of rich and gay clothing, and replen- 25
ished his wardrobe with absurd profusion. Sir John
Malcolm gives us a letter worthy of Sir Matthew Mite,
in which Clive orders "two hundred shirts, the best and
finest that can be got for love or money." A few follies
of this description, grossly exaggerated by report, pro- 30
duced an unfavourable impression on the public mind.

98 ESSAY ON CLIVE

But this was not the worst. Black stories, of which the
greater part were pure inventions, were circulated touch-
ing his conduct in the East. He had to bear the whole
odium, not only of those bad acts to which he had once
s or twice stooped, but of all the bad acts of all the English
in India, of bad acts committed when he was absent,
nay, of bad acts which he had manfully opposed and
severely punished. The very abuses against which he
had waged an honest, resolute, and successful war were
10 laid to his account. He was, in fact, regarded as the
personification of all the vices and weaknesses which the
public, with or without reason, ascribed to the English
adventurers in Asia. We have ourselves heard old men,
who knew nothing of his history, but who still retained
15 the prejudices conceived in their youth, talk of him as
an in£arjiate,£eQd. Johnson always held this language.
Brown, whom Clive employed to lay out his pleasure
grounds, was amazed to see in the house of his noble
employer a chest which had once been filled with gold
20 from the treasury of Moorshedabad, and could not
understand how the conscience of the criminal could
suffer him to sleep with such an object so near to his
bedchamber. The peasantry of Surrey looked with mys-
terious horror on the stately house which was rising at
25 Claremont, and whispered that the great wicked lord
had ordered the walls to be made so thick in order to
keep out the devil, who would one day carry him away
bodily. Among the gaping clowns who drank in this
frightful story was a worthless ugly lad of the name of
30 Hunt, since widely known as William Huntington, S.S. ;
and the superstition which was strangely mingled with

ESSAY ON CLIVE 99

the knavery of that remarkable impostor seems to have
derived no small nutriment from the tales which he
heard of the life and character of Clive.

In the meantime, the impulse which Clive had given
to the administration of Bengal was constantly becoming 5
fainter and fainter. His policy was to a great extent
abandoned ; the abuses which he had suppressed began
to revive ; and at length the evils which a bad govern-
ment had eng^enjlered were aggravated by one of those
fearful visitations which the best government cannot 10
avert. In the summer of 1770, the rains failed; the
earth was parched up ; the tanks were empty ; the rivers
shrank within their beds ; and a famine, such as is known
only in countries where every household depends for
support on its own little patch of cultivation, filled the 15
whole valley of the Ganges with misery and death.
Tender and delicate women, whose veils had never been
lifted before the public gaze, came forth from the inner
chambers in which Eastern jealousy had kept watch
over their beauty, threw themselves on the earth before 20
the passers-by, and, with loud wailings, implored a hand-
ful of rice for their children. The Hoogley every day
rolled down thousands of corpses close to the porticoes
and gardens of the English conquerors. The very streets
of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying and the dead. 25
The lean and feeble survivors had not energy enough to
bear the bodies of their kindred to the funeral pile or to
the holy river, or even to scare away the jackals and
vultures, who fed on human remains in the face of day.
The extent of the mortality was never ascertained ; but 30
it was popularly reckoned by millions. This melancholy

too ESSAY ON CLIVE

intelligence added to the excitement which already pre-
vailed in England on Indian subjects. The proprietors
of East India stock were uneasy about their dividends.
All men of common humanity were touched by the
5 calamities of our unhappy subjects ; and indignation
soon began to mingle itself with pity. It was rumoured
that the Company's servants had created the famine by
engrossing all the rice of the country; that they had
sold grain for eight, ten, twelve times the price at which

10 they had bought it ; and one English functionary who,
the year before, was not worth a hundred guineas, had,
during that season of misery, remitted sixty thousand
pounds to London. These charges we believe to have
been unfounded. That servants of the Company had

15 ventured, since Clive's departure, to deal in rice, is
probable. That, if they dealt in rice, they must have
gained by the scarcity, is certain. But there is no
reason for thinking that they either produced or aggra-
vated an evil which physical causes sufficiently explain.

20 The outcry which was raised against them on this occa-
sion was, we suspect, as absurd as the imputations which,
in times of dearth at home, were once thrown by states-
men and judges, and are still thrown by two or three old
women, on the corn factors. It was, however, so loud

25 and so general that it appears to have imposed even on
an intellect raised so high above vulgar prejudices as
that of Adam Smith. What was still more extraordinary,
these unhappy events greatly increased the unpopularity
of Lord Clive. He had been some years in England

30 when the famine took place. None of his acts had the
smallest tendency to produce such a calamity. If the

ESSAY ON CLIVE 101

servants of the Company had traded in rice, they had
done so in direct contravention of the rule which he had
laid down, and, while in power, had resolutely enforced.
But, in the eyes of his countrymen, he was, as we have
said, the Nabob, the Anglo-Indian character personified ; 5
and, while he was building and planting in Surrey, he
was held responsible for all the effects of a dry season in
Bengal.

Parliament had hitherto bestowed very little attention
on our Eastern possessions. Since the death of George 10
the Second, a rapid succession of weak administrations,
each of which was in turn flattered and betrayed by the
Court, had held the semblance of power. Intrigues in
the palace, riots in the capital, and insurrectionary
movements in the American colonies, had left the 15
advisers of the Crown little leisure to study Indian
politics. When they did interfere, their interference was
feeble and irresolute. Lord Chatham, indeed, during
the short period of his ascendency in the councils of
George the Third, had meditated a bold attack on the 20
Company. But his plans were rendered abortive by the
strange malady which about that time began to over-
cloud his splendid genius.

At length, in 1772, it was generally felt that Parliament
could no longer neglect the affairs of India. The 25
Government was stronger than any which had held
power since the breach between Mr Pitt and the great
Whig connection in 1761. No pressing question of
domestic or European policy required the attention of
public men. There was a short and delusive lull 30
between two tempests. The excitement produced by

102 ESSAY ON CLIVE

the Middlesex election was over; the discontents of
America did not yet threaten civil war; the financial
difficulties of the Company brought on a crisis; the
Ministers were forced to take up the subject ; and the
5 whole storm, which had long been gathering, now broke
at once on the head of Clive.

His situation was indeed singularly unfortunate. He
was hated throughout the country, hated at the India
House, hated, above all, by those wealthy and powerful
10 servants of the Company, whose rapacity and tyranny he
had withstood. He had to bear the double odium of
his bad and of his good actions, of every Indian abuse
and of every Indian reform. The state of the political
world was such that he could count on the support of
15 no powerful connection. The party to which he had
belonged, that of George Grenville, had been hostile to
the Government, and yet had never cordially united
with the other sections of the Opposition, with the little
band which still followed the fortunes of Lord Chatham,
20 or with the large and respectable body of which Lord
Rockingham was the acknowledged leader. George
Grenville was now dead ; his followers were scattered j
and Clive, unconnected with any of the powerful factions
which divided the Parliament, could reckon only on the
25 votes of those members who were returned by himself.
His enemies, particularly those who were the enemies of
his virtues, were unscrupulous, ferocious, implacable.
Their malevolence aimed at nothing less than the utter
ruin of his fame and fortune. They wished to see him
30 expelled from Parliament, to see his spurs chopped off,
to see his estate confiscated; and it may be doubted

ESSAY ON CLIVE 103

whether even such a result as this would have quenched
their thirst for revenge.

Clive's parliamentary tactics resembled his military
tactics. Deserted, surrounded, outnumbered, and with
everything at stake, he did not even deign to stand on 5
the defensive, but pushed boldly forward to the attack.
At an early stage of the discussions on Indian affairs he
rose, and in a long and elaborate speech vindicated
himself from a large part of the accusations which had
been brought against him. He is said to have produced 10
a great impression on his audience. Lord Chatham,
who, now the ghost of his former self, loved to haunt
the scene of his glory, was that night under the gallery
of the House of Commons, and declared that he had
never heard a finer speech. It was subsequently printed 15
under Clive's direction, and, when the fullest allowance
has been made for the assistance which he may have ob-
tained from literary friends, proves him to have pos-
sessed, not merely strong sense and a manly spirit, but
talents both for disquisition and declamation which 20
assiduous culture might have improved into the highest
excellence. He confined his defence on this occasion to
the measures of his last administration, and succeeded so
far that his enemies thenceforth thought it expedient to
direct their attacks chiefly against the earlier part of 25
his life.

The earlier part of his life unfortunately presented
some assailable points to their hostility. A committee
was chosen by ballot to inquire into the affairs of India ;
and by this committee the whole history of that great 30
revolution which threw down Surajah Dowlah and

io4 ESSAY ON CLIVE

raised Meer Jaffier was sifted with malignant care.
Clive was subjected to the most unsparing examination
and cross-examination, and afterwards bitterly com-
plained that he, the Baron of Plassey, had been treated
5 like a sheep-stealer. The boldness and ingeniousness
of his replies would alone suffice to show how alien
from his nature were the frauds to which, in the course
of his Eastern negotiations, he had sometimes descended.
He avowed the arts which he had employed to deceive

10 Omichund, and resolutely said that he was not ashamed
of them, and that, in the same circumstances, he would
again act in the same manner. He admitted that he
had received immense sums from Meer Jaffier ; but he
denied that, in doing so, he had violated any obligation

15 of morality or honour. He laid claim, on the contrary,
and not without some reason, to the praise of eminent
disinterestedness. He described in vivid language the
situation in which his victory had placed him: great
princes dependent on his pleasure ; an opulent city

20 afraid of being given up to plunder ; wealthy bankers
bidding against each other for his smiles ; vaults piled
with gold and jewels thrown open to him alone. " By
God, Mr Chairman," he exclaimed, "at this moment I
stand astonished at my own moderation."

25 The inquiry was so extensive that the Houses rose
before it had been completed. It was continued in the
following session. When at length the committee had
concluded its labours, enlightened and impartial men
had little difficulty in making up their minds as to the

30 result. It was clear that Clive had been guilty of some
acts which it is impossible to vindicate without attacking

ESSAY ON CLIVE 105

the authority of all the most sacred laws which regulate
the intercourse of individuals and of states. But it
was equally clear that he had displayed great talents,
and even great virtues ; that he had rendered eminent
services both to his country and to the people of India ; 5
and that it was in truth not for his dealings with Meer
Jaffier, nor for the fraud which he had practised on
Omichund, but for his determined resistance to avarice
and tyranny, that he was now called in question.

Ordinary criminal justice knows nothing of set-off. 10
The greatest desert cannot be pleaded in answer to a
charge of the slightest transgression. If a man has
sold beer on a Sunday morning, it is no defence
that he has saved the life of a fellow-creature at the risk
of his own. If he has harnessed a Newfoundland dog 15
to his little child's carriage, it is no defence that he was
wounded at Waterloo. But it is not in this way that we
ought to deal with men who, raised far above ordinary
restraints, and tried by far more than ordinary tempta-
tions, are entitled to a more than ordinary measure of 20
indulgence. Such men should be judged by their con-
temporaries as they will be judged by posterity. Their
bad actions ought not indeed to be called good ; but their
good and bad actions ought to be fairly weighed ; and if
on the whole the good preponderate, the sentence ought to 25
be one, not merely of acquittal, but of approbation. Not
a single great ruler in history can be absolved by a judge
who fixes his eye inexorably on one or two unjustifiable
acts. Bruce the deliverer of Scotland, Maurice the
deliverer of Germany, William the deliverer of Holland, 30
his great descendant the deliverer of England, Murray

io6 ESSAY ON CLIVE

the good regent, Cosmo the father of his country, Henry
the Fourth of France, Peter the Great of Russia, how
would the best of them pass such a scrutiny? History
takes wider views ; and the best tribunal for great
5 political cases is the tribunal which anticipates the
verdict of history.

Reasonable and moderate men of all parties felt this
in Clive's case. They could not pronounce him
blameless ; but they were not disposed to abandon him

10 to that low-minded and rancorous pack who had run
him down and were eager to worry him to death. Lord
North, though not very friendly to him, was not dis-
posed to go to extremities against him. While the
inquiry was still in progress, Give, who had some

15 years before been created a Knight of the Bath, was
installed with great pomp in Henry the Seventh's
Chapel. He was soon after appointed Lord Lieutenant
of Shropshire. When he kissed hands, George the
Third, who had always been partial to him, admitted

20 him to a private audience, talked to him half an hour
on Indian politics, and was visibly affected when the
persecuted general spoke of his services and of the way
in which they had been requited.

At length the charges came in a definite form before

25 the House of Commons. Burgoyne, chairman of the
committee, a man of wit, fashion, and honour, an
agreeable dramatic writer, an officer whose courage
was never questioned, and whose skill was at that
time highly esteemed, appeared as the accuser. The

30 members of the administration took different sides ;
for in that age all questions were open questions,

ESSAY ON CLIVE 107

except such as were brought forward by the Govern-
ment, or such as implied censure on the Government.
Thurlow, the Attorney-General, was among the assail-
ants. Wedderburne, the Solicitor-General, strongly
attached to Clive, defended his friend with extra- 5
ordinary force of argument and language. It is a
curious circumstance that, some years later, Thurlow
was the most conspicuous champion of Warren
Hastings, while Wedderburne was among the most
unrelenting persecutors of that great though not fault- 10
less statesman. Clive spoke in his own defence at less
length and with less art than in the preceding year, but
with much energy and pathos. He recounted his great
actions and his wrongs ; and, after bidding his hearers
remember, that they were about to decide not only on 15
his honour but on their own, he retired from the House.
The Commons resolved that acquisitions made by
the arms of the State belong to the State alone, and
that it is illegal in the servants of the State to appropri-
ate such acquisitions to themselves. They resolved 20
that this wholesome rule appeared to have been
systematically violated by the English functionaries in
Bengal. On a subsequent day they went a step further,
and resolved that Clive had, by means of the power
which he possessed as commander of the British forces 25
in India, obtained large sums from Meer Jaffier. Here
the Commons stopped. They had voted the major
and minor of Burgoyne's syllogism ; but they shrank
from drawing the logical conclusion. When it was
moved that Lord Clive had abused his powers, and 30
set an evil example to the servants of the public, the

io8 ESSAY ON CLIVE

previous question was put and carried. At length,
long after the sun had risen on an animated debate,
Wedderburne moved that Lord Clive had at the same
time rendered great and meritorious services to his

5 country; and this motion passed without a division.

The result of this memorable inquiry appears to us,
on the whole, honourable to the justice, moderation,
and discernment of the Commons. They had indeed
no great temptation to do wrong. They would have

10 been very bad judges of an accusation brought against
Jenkinson or against Wilkes. But the question respect-
ing Clive was not a party question; and the House
accordingly acted with the good sense and good feeling
which may always be expected from an assembly of

15 English gentlemen, not blinded by faction.

The equitable and temperate proceedings of the
British Parliament were set off to the greatest advantage
by a foil. The wretched government of Lewis the
Fifteenth had murdered, directly or indirectly, almost

20 every Frenchman who had served his country with
distinction in the East. Labourdonnais was flung into
the Bastile, and, after years of suffering, left it only to
die. Dupleix, stripped of his immense fortune, and
broken-hearted by humiliating attendance in ante-

25 chambers, sank into an obscure grave. Lally was
dragged to the common place of execution with a gag
between his lips. The Commons of England, on the
other hand, treated their living captain with that
discriminating justice which is seldom shown except to

30 the dead. They laid down sound general principles ;
they delicately pointed out where he had deviated from

ESSAY ON CLIVE 109

those principles ; and they tempered the gentle censure
with liberal eulogy. The contrast struck Voltaire,
always partial to England, and always eager to expose
the abuses of the Parliaments of France. Indeed he
seems, at this time, to have meditated a history of the 5
conquest of Bengal. He mentioned his design to Dr
Moore, when that amusing writer visited him at Ferney.
Wedderburne took great interest in the matter, and
pressed Clive to furnish materials. Had the plan been
carried into execution, we have no doubt that Voltaire 10
would have produced a book containing much lively
and picturesque narrative, many just and humane senti-
ments poignantly expressed, many grotesque blunders,
many sneers at the Mosaic chronology, much scandal
about the Catholic missionaries, and much sublime 15
theo-philanthropy, stolen from the New Testament,
and put into the mouths of virtuous and philosophical
Brahmins.

Clive was now secure in the enjoyment of his fortune
and his honours. He was surrounded by attached 20
friends and relations; and he had not yet passed the
season of vigorous bodily and mental exertion. But
clouds had long been gathering over his mind, and now
settled on it in thick darkness. From early youth he
had been subject to fits of that strange melancholy 25
"which rejoiceth exceedingly and is glad when it can
find the grave." While still a writer at Madras, he had
twice attempted to destroy himself. Business and
prosperity had produced a salutary effect on his spirits.
In India, while he was occupied by great affairs, in 30
England, while wealth and rank had still the charm of

no ESSAY ON CLIVE

novelty, he had borne up against his constitutional
misery. But he had now nothing to do, and nothing to
wish for. His active spirit in an inactive situation
drooped and withered like a plant in an uncongenial air.
5 The malignity with which his enemies had pursued him,
the indignity with which he had been treated by the
committee, the censure, lenient as it was, which the
House of Commons had pronounced, the knowledge
that he was regarded by a large portion of his country-

10 men as a cruel and perfidious tyrant, all concurred to
irritate and depress him. In the meantime, his temper
was tried by acute physical suffering. During his long
residence in tropical climates, he had contracted several
painful distempers. In order to obtain ease he called

15 in the help of opium; and he was gradually enslaved
by this treacherous ally. To the last, however, his
genius occasionally flashed through the gloom. It was
said that he would sometimes, after sitting silent and
torpid for hours, rouse himself to the discussion of some

20 great question, would display in full vigour all the talents
of the soldier and the statesman, and would then sink
back into his melancholy repose.

The disputes with America had now become so
serious that an appeal to the sword seemed inevitable ;

2$ and the Ministers were desirous to avail themselves of
the services of Clive. Had he still been what he was
when he raised the siege of Patna and annihilated the
Dutch army and navy at the mouth of the Ganges,
it is not improbable that the resistance of the colonists

30 would have been put down, and that the inevitable
separation would have been deferred for a few years.

ESSAY ON CLIVE in

But it was too late. His strong mind was fast sinking
under many kinds of suffering. On the twenty-second
of November, 1774, he died by his own hand. He had
just completed his forty-ninth year.

In the awful close of so much prosperity and glory, 5
the vulgar saw only a confirmation of all their prejudices ;
and some men of real piety and genius so far forgot the
maxims both of religion and of philosophy as confidently
to ascribe the mournful event to the just vengeance
of God, and to the horrors of an evil conscience. It 10
is with very different feelings that we contemplate the
spectacle of a great mind ruined by the weariness of
satiety, by the pangs of wounded honour, by fatal
diseases, and more fatal remedies.

Clive committed great faults; and we have not 15
attempted to disguise them. But his faults, when
weighed against his merits, and viewed in connection
with his temptations, do not appear to us to deprive
him of his right to an honourable place in the estimation
of posterity. 20

From his first visit to India dates the renown of the
English arms in the East. Till he appeared, his country-
men were despised as mere pedlars, while the French
were revered as a people formed for victory and com-
mand. His courage and capacity dissolved the charm. 25
With the defence of Arcot commences that long series
of Oriental triumphs which closes with the fall of Ghizni.
Nor must we forget that he was only twenty-five years
old when he approved himself ripe for military command.
This is a rare if not a singular distinction. It is true 30
that Alexander, Conde, and Charles the Twelfth, won

H2 ESSAY ON CLIVE

great battles at a still earlier age ; but those princes were
surrounded by veteran generals of distinguished skill,
to whose suggestions must be attributed the victories
of the Granicus, of Rocroi and of Narva. Clive, an
5 inexperienced youth, had yet more experience than any
of those who served under him. He had to form
himself, to form his officers, and to form his army.
The only man, as far as we recollect, who at an equally
early age ever gave equal proof of talents for war, was
10 Napoleon Bonaparte.

From Clive's second visit to India dates the political
ascendency of the English in that country. His dexterity
and resolution realised, in the course of a few months,
more than all the gorgeous visions which had floated
15 before the imagination of Dupleix. Such an extent of
cultivated territory, such an amount of revenue, such
a multitude of subjects, was never added to the dominion
of Rome by the most successful proconsul. Nor were
such wealthy spoils ever borne under arches of triumph,
20 down the Sacred Way, and through the crowded Forum,
to the threshold of Tarpeian Jove. The fame of those
who subdued Antiochus and Tigranes grows dim when
compared with the splendour of the exploits which the
young English adventurer achieved at the head of an
25 army not equal in numbers to one half of a Roman
legion.

From Clive's third visit to India dates the purity of

the administration of our Eastern empire. When he

landed in Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was regarded as

30 a place to which Englishmen were sent only to get rich,

by any means, in the shortest possible time. He first

ESSAY ON CLIVE 113

made dauntless and unsparing war on that gigantic
system of oppression, extortion, and corruption. In
that war he manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame,
and his splendid fortune. The same sense of justice
which forbids us to conceal or extenuate the faults of 5
his earlier days compels us to admit that those faults
were nobly repaired. If the reproach of the Company
and of its servants has been taken away, if in India the
yoke of foreign masters, elsewhere the heaviest of all
yokes, has been found lighter than that of any native 10
dynasty, if to that gang of public robbers, which formerly
spread terror through the whole plain of Bengal, has
succeeded a body of functionaries not more highly
distinguished by ability and diligence than by integrity,
disinterestedness, and public spirit, if we now see such 15
men as Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, after leading
victorious armies, after making and deposing kings,
return, proud of their honourable poverty, from a land
which once held out to every greedy factor the hope of
boundless wealth, the praise is in no small measure due 20
to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of con-
querors. But it is found in a better list, in the list of
those who have done and suffered much for the happiness
of mankind. To the warrior, history will assign a place
in the same rank with Lucullus and Trajan. Nor will 25
she deny to the reformer a share of that veneration with
which France cherishes the memory of Turgot, and with
which the latest generations of Hindoos will contemplate
the statue of Lord William Bentinck.

NOTES

Page i, 11. 5, 6. Every schoolboy knows. In this passage
Macaulay's schoolboy, who has long been proverbial for his
encyclopsedic scholarship, makes his most important appearance.
It would perhaps be invidious to inquire how many actual school-
boys possess the knowledge here confidently ascribed to this
prodigy of learning.

P. i 1. 6. who imprisoned Montezuma. Montezuma II.,
the last' emperor of Mexico, succeeded to the throne in 1502, was
taken prisoner by Cortes (see note to 1. 12), and died broken-
hearted in 1520.

P. i, 1. 7. Atahualpa. The last of the Incas, the rulers oi
ancient' Peru from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. He was
defeated and captured by the Spanish under Pizarro (the Spanish
conqueror of Peru), and condemned to be burnt ; but on his con-
senting to receive Christian baptism the sentence was commuted to
death by strangulation.

P. i, 1. 9. the battle of Buxar. Buxar is 60 miles E.N.E.
of Benares. Here in 1764 a British force of 7000 under Major
Hector Munro defeated a native army of 40,000. It will be noted
that Macaulay does not mention this battle elsewhere in his essay.
This omission may be accounted for by the fact that he wishes to
keep attention fixed on Clive and his achievements. But it none
the less leaves the reader with a wrong impression of the course of
events and of dive's share in them. He implies that dive's third
landing in 1765 was alone sufficient to quell the hostility of the
native powers and to bring about immediate peace. But this
hostility had in fact already been broken by Munro's decisive
victory. See Introduction, § III.

P. i, 1. 10. the massacre of Patna. Patna, a city of Bengal,
on the Ganges, 140 miles E. of Benares. It was the scene of a
massacre of British prisoners by Mir Kasim, the nabob, in 1763.
See p. 79, 11. 12, 13.

114

NOTES US

P. I, 1. 10. Sujah Dowlah. More correctly, Siraj-iid-Daula,
nabob of Oude. See pp. 40-62.

P. I, 1. II. Oude. Or Oudh, a province of British India,
lying between the Ganges on the S.W. and Nepal on the N.E.
Formerly under various Mohammedan rulers, it was annexed by
Great Britain in 1856, and was one of the principal scenes of the
Indian Mutiny of 1857.

P. I, 1. II. Travancore. A tributary native state of India,
under British control, situated on the western coast at the extreme
S. of the peninsula.

P. I, 1. II. Holkar. One of the principal chiefs of the
Mahrattas, the ruler of Indore, one of the five states which in the
eighteenth century composed the Mahratta confederation. The
Mahrattas are a race of Hindus inhabiting Western and Central
India. Their power was at its height about the time when Clive
went to India. See pp. 15, 16.

P. I, 1. II. Hindoo. Or Hindu, properly, the native Aryan
race of India, as distinguished from those of Parsee, Mussulman, or
Christian descent.

P. I, 1. 12. Mussulman. Mohammedan ; from musulman,
the Persian form of muslim (whence our moslem}, a follower of
Mohammed.

P. I, 1. 12. Cortes. Hernando Cortes (1485-1547), a famous
Spanish soldier, the conqueror of Mexico. For the story of his
wonderful achievements, which, it has been well said, reads "more
like a romantic fable than sober fact," see Prescott's History of
the Conquest of Mexico and the Life by Sir Arthur Helps.

P. i, 11. 13, 14. savages . . . ignorant of the use of metals.
An illustration of Macaulay's occasional tendency to rhetorical
over-statement. In order to emphasise, by contrast, the greatness
of the British conquest of India, he depreciates the exploits and
success of Cortes in the New World. The people conquered by
Cortes cannot rightly be called savages. Prescott describes them
as "semi-civilised." They had large cities, the population of
their capital, Mexico, being estimated at 300,0x30; and though
their religion was singularly barbaric, they had many of the arts
and refinements of civilisation. Of horses they had no knowledge,
but agriculture was well advanced among them ; they had great
skill in architecture; they were acquainted with silver, lead,

tI6 ESSAY ON CLIVE

copper, and tin, though not with iron ; their smith-work was very
fine, and they employed a mineral of volcanic origin, called
obsidian, for the making of knives, razors, and swords. See
Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico, Book I. chap. iv.

P. I, 11. 18, 19. harquebusier. Or arquebusier (French,
arquebusier), a soldier armed with an arquebuse, an old hand-
gun.

P. 2, 11. 1-5. The people of India . . . Spaniards. These
statements are open to question. In asserting that the people of
India when we subdued them were ten times as numerous as the
Americans vanquished by the Spanish, Macaulay is almost certainly
guilty of serious exaggeration ; the matter, at anyrate, is one upon
which so dogmatic an affirmation should not have been made.
Moreover, while it is difficult to find a common standard by which
to test Eastern and Western civilisations, we can scarcely hesitate to
say that the Spaniards of the sixteenth century were more civilised
than the Indians of the eighteenth.

P. 2, Lio. Ferdinand the Catholic. Ferdinand V. (1452-1516),
King of Castile. It was during his reign that the foundations of
Spanish greatness were laid.

P. 2, 1. 12. the Great Captain. The surname of Gonsalvo
Hernandez de Cordova (HSS-IS'S). a celebrated Spanish general.

P. 2, 1. 21. Mr Mill's book. The History of British India,
by James Mill, father of the more famous John Stuart Mill. It is a
masterly work, but, as Macaulay justly says, it is deficient in anima-
tion and picturesqueness.

P. 2, 1. 23. Orme. Robert Orme (1728-1801), the author of a
History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in
Indostanfrom 1745-

P. 3! 1- 3- Sir John Malcolm. A soldier and diplomatist
(1769-1833). His Life of Clive, which is the nominal text of the
present essay, was published three years after his death. It was
from his History of Persia that Matthew Arnold took the story of
his poem, Sohrab and Rtistwn.

P. 3, 1. 4. the late Lord Powis. Edward Clive (1754-1839),
eldest son of Robert Clive, created Earl of Powis in 1804.
P. 3, 1. 31. an estate. The name of this was Styche.
P. 5, 1. 8. parts. Natural gifts or qualities. This sense of the
word was extremely common in the eighteenth century, but it has

NOTES 117

now a rather old-fashioned flavour. It will be noted that Macaulay
uses it several times in this essay.

P. 5, 11. II, 12. East India Company. The English East
India Company was originally composed of London merchants
trading in the East, and was incorporated by Queen Elizabeth by a
charter granted in 1600. In 1661 Charles II. gave the Company
authority to make war and peace with infidel powers, acquire
territory, build forts, and exercise civil and criminal jurisdiction
within the limits of its settlements. It had three trading settle-
ments, at or near the coast, at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay.
The history of its territorial acquisitions during the later eighteenth
century, by which it laid the foundations of British India, is dealt
with in this essay, from which it will also appear that during this
period it had formidable rivals in the Dutch East India Company
and the French East India Company. In 1858 it relinquished its
functions to the Crown.

P. 5, 1. 15. East India College. The college at Haileybury,
which was founded in 1806 for the preparation of youths for the
Indian civil service. In 1864 it was transformed into a public
school, and as such it still exists.

P. 5, 1. 17. purely a trading corporation. As the note to
11. II, 12 above will show, this is not quite correct. Macaulay is
right in emphasising the military weakness of the Company, but he
omits to mention the important fact that its ships were the largest
British merchantmen then afloat and that they were heavily armed.

P. 6, 11. 12, 13. the prophet's gourd. See Jonah, chap. iv.

P. 6, 1. 18. grandees. Persons of high rank, dignity, or
power. The special connotation of the word may best be obtained
by remembering its derivation from the Spanish grande, a nobleman
belonging to the highest rank and possessing the privilege of
remaining covered in the royal presence.

P. 7, 1. 8. Nabob. A corruption of the Indian word nawdb,
deputy, the title of administrators of provinces under the Mogul
empire. For the later colloquial use of the word, see p. 93,
11. 19-21.

P. 7, 1. 8. the Carnatic. A name formerly given to a region
on the east coast of India now part of the province of Madras. The
reader of this essay will learn that it is memorable as the scene of
the struggle between England and France for supremacy in India.

n8 ESSAY ON CLIVE

P. 7i !• 9- the Deccan. An unofficial name for a portion of
India lying south of the river Nerbudda, and between the Bay of
Bengal and the Arabian Sea.

P. 7, 1. 10. the Nizam. The Nizam's Dominions, or
Hyderabad, form part of the Deccan. In 1687 they became a
province of the Mogul empire, but after 1713, the viceroy of the
Deccan, with the title of Nizam-iil-Mulk (regulator of the state)
made himself practically independent.

P. 7, 1. n. the Great Mogul. The ruler of the Mogul (or
Mongol) empire in India. The first Great Mogul was the con-
queror Baber, who founded the empire in 1526. He was a
descendant of Timur the Tartar, more commonly known as
Tamerlane (1335-1405). Hence the empire is described (p. 12, 1. 3)
as the " inheritance of the house of Tamerlane."

P. 9, 1. 9. Wallenstein. Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von
Wallenstein, or more correctly Waldstein (1583-1634), the most
famous of the imperial generals in the Thirty Years' War. When a
youth he fell from a second-storey window, but escaped without
injury.

P. 9, 11. 16, 17. the war of the Austrian succession. In
1740 the Emperor Charles VI. died without male issue. By the
Pragmatic Sanction he had secured his dominions in Austria,
Hungary, and Bohemia to his daughter Maria Theresa. The
Elector of Bavaria put in a rival claim. He was supported by
France, Prussia, and Spain, while Britain and Holland took Maria
Theresa's side. The war which resulted was terminated in 1748 by
the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.

P. 9, 1. 18. The house of Bourbon. The reigning dynasties ,
of France and Spain belonged to this family.

P. 9, 1. 25. Labourdonnais. Bernard Francois Mahe de la
Bourdonnais (1699-1753), entered the service of the French East
India Company in 1719 ; became captain in the navy of the French
Indies in 1723 ; and in 1734 was appointed governor of the isles of
France (Mauritius) and Bourbon, which by wise administration he
made into flourishing colonies. In 1740 he was given command of
a squadron in Indian waters and greatly harassed the British fleet.
He was accused by Dupleix of betraying the interests of the
Company, and on his return to France in 1748 was imprisoned in
the Bastille for three years. He was then liberated and pronounced

NOTES "9

guiltless, but died the following year. See p. 108. He appears in
Bernardin de Saint Pierre's famous story, Paul et Vtrgime.

P. 10, 1. 9. Dupleix. Joseph Francis Dupleix (1697-1763)
went to sea on an East Indiaman in 1715, and entered the service
of the French Company in 1720. He amassed wealth in trade,
was for ten years superintendent of the Company at Chandernagore
in Bengal, and in 1741 was appointed governor-general of the
French East Indies with the title of nabob. In 1754 he was
recalled to France by Louis XV. The Company refused to repay
him the immense sums he had privately spent in carrying on the
war against England, and he died neglected and poor. See pp. 37

and 1 08.

P 10, 11. 9, 10. Pondicherry. The chief French settlement
in India,' situated on the east of the peninsula, on the Coromandel
coast. It passed several times backwards and forwards between
the French and the English, and was finally ceded to the former

in 1816.

P 10, 11. 16, 17. that Madras should be razed to the ground.

An exaggeration. The order was for the destruction, not of the
city, but of the fortifications, of Madras.

P. II, 1. 8. a desperate duel. "He became involved in a
duel with an officer whom he had accused of cheating at cards. . . .
Clive fired and missed his antagonist, who came close up to him
and held his pistol to his head, desiring him to ask for his life,
which Clive did. His opponent then called upon him to retract
his assertions regarding unfair play, and on his refusal threatened

to shoot him. « Fire and be d ' was Clive's answer. ' I said

you cheated, and I say so still, and I will never pay you.
astonished officer threw away his pistol, exclaiming that Clive was
mad " (Article Clive in Dictionary of National Biography).
incident forms the subject of a poem by Browning, who, however,
has taken some liberties with the facts.

P. II, 1. 16. Major Lawrence. Stringer Lawrence (1697-
1775), known as " the father of the Indian Army."

P. n, 1. 19. peace had been concluded. The peace of Aix-
la-Chapelle. See note to p. 9, 11. 16, 17.

P. 12, 1. 3. the magnificent inheritance of the house ot
Tamerlane. See note to p. 7, 1. n.

P. 12, 1. 13. Delhi. The capital of the Mogul empire.

120 ESSAY ON CLIVE

palace, built by Shah Jehan in the middle of the seventeenth
century, has been described as the most magnificent of all Oriental
palaces. The great mosque, the work of the same ruler, is equally
celebrated.

P. 12, 1. 20. Elector. The title formerly given to those
German princes who had the right of electing the emperor.

P. 13, 1. 9. Aurungzebe. Or Aureng-Zebe (1619-1707),
usurped the throne in 1658, and virtually completed the Mogul
conquest of India. He was the third son of the Shah Jehan
mentioned in note to p. 12, 1. 13 above.

P. 13, 1. 17. Theodosius. Theodosius I., called the Great
(cir. 246-395). He was emperor of the Eastern empire, and for
a short time before his death of the Western empire also.
After his death the empire was rapidly over-run by barbarian
hordes.

P. 13, 11. 19, 20. Carlovingians . . . Charlemagne. Note the
long digression here introduced for the purpose of drawing an
historical parallel. The Carlovingians, or Carolingians, or
Karlings, were the descendants of Charles the Great, or Charle-
magne (742-814), King of the Franks and Emperor of the West.

P. 13, 1. 22. his descendants. The Carlovingians continued
to reign till 989, but they possessed little real power.

P. 13, 11. 23, 24. the wide dominions of the Franks. The
Prankish dominions, roughly speaking, included France and
Germany, together with parts of Italy and Spain.

P. 13, 11. 27, 28. Charles the Bald, Charles the Fat, and
Charles the Simple. Fittingly described as "abject." Charles
the Bald (823-877) was the grandson of Charlemagne. His
nephew, Charles the Fat (832-888) was deposed by his subjects
on account of his ineptitude, and died in a cloister. Charles the
Simple (879-929) was grandson of Charles the Bald. He was
dethroned in 922.

P. 14, 11. 1-4. The pirates of the Northern Sea . . . Seine.
The Northmen, or Norsemen, had long raided the French coast.
In 912 they were allowed by Charles the Simple to settle in the
valley of the Seine under their leader, Rollo. They there became
known as Normans.

P. 14, 1. 4. The Hungarian. The Hungarians are generally
believed to be the descendants of the Scythians, and to have come

NOTES 121

from the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea. They entered
Europe about 884.

P. 14, 1. 5. Gog or Magog. See Revelation, xx. 8.

P. 14, 1. 7. Pannonian forests. Pannonia was a Roman
province, roughly corresponding with what is now known as
Hungary.

P. 14, 1. 8. Saracen. The name originally of a predatory
Arab tribe ; afterwards used generally for the Arabian followers of
Mohammed. They conquered Sicily in 827-878.

P. 14, 1. 27. bang. More correctly bhang, a stupefying prepara-
tion of the dried leaves of hemp. It is the same as the Turkish
haschisch.

P. 14, 1. 31. A Persian conqueror. Nadir Shah, or Kuli
Khan, who in 1739 invaded India and sacked Delhi.

P- I5> 1- 3- R°e- Sir Thomas Roe, sent by James I. in 1615
on an embassy to the Great Mogul. See p. 86.

P. 15, 1. 3. Bernier. Fra^ois Bernier, a French traveller,
who for twelve years was physician at the court of Aurungzebe.

P. 15, 1. 3. the Peacock Throne. A gorgeous throne covered
with gold and magnificent jewels, and surmounted by a peacock of
gold and jewels. It was erected by Shah Jehan (see note to
p. 12, 1. 13). Tavernier, a French jeweller who saw it in 1665,
estimated its value at six and a half millions of pounds sterling.

P. 15, 1. 4. Golconda. A fortress and ruined city in the
Nizam's Dominions, five miles from Hyderabad. " In English
literature Golconda has given its name to the diamonds which were
found in many places within the dominions of the Kutb Shahi
dynasty. There are no diamond mines within the immediate
neighbourhood of Golconda itself" (Imferial Gazetteer of India,
xii. 309, 310) ; but the stones were cut and polished there.

P. 15, 11. 6-8. Mountain of Light . . . Runjeet Sing . . .
the hideous idol of Orissa. The Mountain of Light is the famous
Koh-i-Noor diamond. It was acquired by Shah Jehan in 1656 and
by Nadir Shah in 1739. Runjeet Sing, or Singh, who owned it at
the time of his death in 1839, was ruler of the Punjab. He be-
queathed it to the temple of Jugganath, or Juggernaut, at Puri in
the Orissa division of Bengal. His bequest, however, was not
carried out. On the conquest of the Punjab in 1849, the jewel
passed into the possession of the East India Company, who

122 ESSAY ON CLIVE

presented it to Queen Victoria. It is now one of the crown
jewels.

P. 15, 1. II. Rajpootana. A Hindu state in N.W. India.

P. 15, 1. 12. Rohilcund. Or Rohilkhand, a division in the
North-west Provinces of British India.

P. 15, 1. 13. The Seiks. Now generally written Sikhs, the
members of a politico-religious community founded by Nanak
Shah about 1500. Their power was destroyed when the British
annexed the Punjab in 1849.

P. 15, 1. 13. The Jauts. Or Jats, a mysterious race, supposed
to be Hinduised Scythians. Their power, which was at its height
in the eighteenth century, was destroyed by Lord Combermere in
1826. The Jumna, or Jamuna river is the chief tributary of the
Ganges.

P. 15,1.23. Mahrattas. See note to p. i, 1. 11, vmder
HOLKAR.

P. 16, 1. 15. Berar. Part of the dominions of the rajah of
Nagpur, one of the five states of the Mahratta confederation. See
note to p. i, 1. n, under HOLKAR.

P. 16, 1. 16. Mahratta ditch. A ditch dug round Calcutta
during the time of the Berar raids, 1742-1751. It was never finished.

P. 17, 1. 5. Cabul. The capital of Afghanistan.

P. 17, 1. 5. Chorasan. A N.E. province of Persia.

P. 17, 1. 19. Burrampooter. More correctly, Brahmaputra,
one of the five rivers of the Punjab. 1 he name Punjab, or Panjab,
means in Hindustani, five rivers.

P. 17, 1. 20. Hydaspes. The Greek name of the Jhelum,
another of the five rivers of the Punjab.

P. 17, 1. 21. Ava. Formerly the capital of Burmah.

P. 17, 1. 21. Candahar. A city of Afghanistan, S. of Cabul.

P. 17, 11. 22-24. The man who first saw . . . Dupleix.
This is not strictly correct, for the conception of a possible
European domination in India had arisen before Dupleix began
his career there. Bernier (see note to p. 15, 1. 3) had declared
that 20,000 French troops under Conde or Turenne could conquer
the Moguls; while the idea of "the foundation of a large, well-
grounded, sure English dominion in India" had been thrown out
by the directors of the Fast India Company as early as 1687. The
special distinction of Dupleix at this point lies in the fact that he

NOTES i23

was the first, not, as Macaulay says, to entertain the theory of a
European empire in India, but to attempt its practical realisation.
P. 18, 1. 4. Saxe. Maurice, Comte de Saxe (1696-1750),
Marshal of France, and the greatest French commander in the war
of the Austrian succession.

P. 18, 1. 4. Frederic. Frederick II., called "The Great"
(1712-1786), King of Prussia from 1740, and the greatest military
genius of his time.

P. 19, 1. 10. Nizam al Mulk. See note to p. 7, 1. 10.
P. 19, 1. 15. Anaverdy Khan. Properly, Anwar-iid-din.
P. 20, 1. 5. sepoys. Sepoy, a corruption of the Hindustani
sepdhi, a native soldier in a European army.

P. 20, 11. 10, II. Nabob of Arcot . . . Burke. Mahommed
AH afterwards became indebted in enormous sums to the East India
Company, and extorted the money to pay the interest from the
natives of the Carnatic. Burke's famous speech On the Nabob of
Arcofs Debts was delivered in 1785. Arcot was formerly the
capital of the Carnatic.

P. 2O, 1. 12. Trichinopoiy. A district in Madras.
P. 20, 1. 27. palanquin. An Indian litter, somewhat resembling
the European sedan chair. It is composed of a large wooden box
slung upon poles, the ends of which rest on the shoulders of the
bearers.

P. 21, 11. 25, 26. the vainglorious Frenchman. Macaulay
is unjust to Dupleix. The actions here criticised were undoubtedly
dictated more by considerations of policy than by mere personal
vanity. This is in fact admitted by Macaulay himself later when
(p. 29) he praises dive's "just and profound policy" in destroying
" the devices by which Dupleix had laid the public mind of India
under a spell." Taking policy with policy, if Clive were right
Dupleix cannot have been wrong. That Macaulay signally fails to
give the great Frenchman his due, the following passage will show :

"He was a great administrator, a diplomatist of the highest

order, a splendid organiser, a man who possessed supremely the
power of influencing others. He had . . . an energy that nothing could
abate ; a persistence, a determination, that were proof against
every shock of fortune. He ... was endowed besides with that
equanimity of temper that enabled him to bear the greatest reverses,
the most cruel injustice towards himself, with resignation and com-

I24 ESSAY ON CLIVE

posure" (Major Malleson's History of the French in India, pp. 415,
416). For further illustration of Macaulay's unfairness to Dupleix,
see note to p. 31, 1. n.

P. 24, 1. 16. Vellore. A town in che North Arcot district of
Madras.

P. 25, 1. 15. the Tenth Legion of Caesar. This legion is
frequently selected for special mention in Caesar's Commentaries ;
on account of its courage and devotion.

P. 25, 1. 16. Old Guard. A body of soldiers composed of the
picked veterans of Napoleon's army.

P. 26, 11. 18, 19. the great Mahommedan festival. Hosein
was the younger son of Ali, first cousin of Mohammed, and Fatima,
the Prophet's favourite daughter, whose descendants were known
as Fatimites. Ali seems to have been the natural successor of
Mohammed as Khalif, or ruler of Islam, but his reign was troubled
by civil war, and both he and his elder son, Hassan, were presently
assassinated. The Khalifate then passed to the dynasty of
Ommeyah. The claim of Yezid, the second ruler of this house,
was challenged by Hosein, who was however vanquished in battle,
and murdered by Yezid's command. The Shiite sect of Moslems
held that the descendants of Ali and Fatima were the only true
Khalifs. The festival in question is called the " Muharram,"
from the name of the month in which it occurs, and is held on
Sept. I4th.

P. 26, 1. 21. Islam. A general name for Mohammedanism.

P. 27, 1. 7. the garden of the Houris. The Mohammedan
paradise. Houri (Persian, Hurt), a nymph of paradise.

P. 27, 11. 10, ii. drunk with enthusiasm, drunk with bang.
An imitation of Milton's "drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine"
(Samson Agonistes, 1. 1670).

P. 28, 1. 26. Conjeveram. A town in the Chingleput district
of Madras, 45 miles W. S. W. of Madras city. Crowded with temples
and shrines, it is accounted one of the seven sacred cities of India.

P. 28, 1. 27. Arnee. Or Ami, a town in the North Arcot
district of Madras.

P. 31, 11. 10, ii. His enemies accused him of personal
cowardice. For an historian to give currency to such a charge
against a man on the mere authority of that man's " enemies," is
not only unjustifiable, it is worse — it is mean. Macaulay does not

NOTES 125

indeed go so far as to uphold the accusation ; but as he does not
condemn it, he gives it a tacit approval. As a matter of fact, the
charge was quite unfounded. Dupleix " was not indeed a general.
He did not possess the taste for leading armies into the field. Yet
he showed on many occasions — notably on the occasion of the
siege of Pondicherry by Boscawen— that he could not only stand
fire, but could defeat by his unassisted and natural skill all the
efforts of the enemy" (Malleson's History of the French in India,
p. 416).

P. 31, 1. 12. Captain Bobadil. A cowardly braggart in Ben
Jonson's comedy, Every Man in his Humour.

P. 31, 1. 20. Bussy. Charles Joseph Patissier, Marquis de
Bu-sy-Castelnau (1718-1785), "the ablest French officer who ever
served in India " (Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Forde).
Later he fought against the English in the American War of
Independence.

P. 32, 1. 19. Covelong. A town lying between Madras and
Chingleput.

P. 32, 1. 19. Chingleput. The chief town of the district of
the same name. It is 35 miles S.W. of Madras.

P. 32, 1. 27. the Company's crimps. Crimp is, strictly
speaking, one who decoys men into the naval or military service.
" It was the common practice of the London agents of the East
India Company, without one jot or tittle of a legal right empower-
ing them to do so, to organise bands, to entrap lusty youths . . . and
to cause them to be detained in establishments scattered here and
there in the capital . . . until they could be sold into the hands of
Bengal ship captains, who employed them in the service of the
company in Hindustan" (W. C. Sydney's England and the English
in the Eighteenth Century, i. 353).
P. 32, 11. 27, 28. flash-houses. Low public-houses.
P. 33, 11. 22-24. He married . . . sister . . . Astronomer
Royal. Clive married Margaret Maskelyne, the sister of Dr
Nevil Maskelyne. Another brother, Edmund, was among his
fellow-writers in the service of the East India Company.

P. 35, 1. 12. a petition. A petition presented by the defeated
side in an election to unseat the successful candidate.

P- 35. I- ZS- the Jacobites. From Latin Jacobus, James ; the
name given after the revolution of 1688 to the adherents of the

126 ESSAY ON CLIVE

exiled Stuarts— first James II., and afterwards his son, the Old
Pretender, and his grandson, the Y oung Pretender.

P. 35, 1. 16. the last rebellion. That of the party of Charles
Edward, the Young Pretender, who was defeated at Culloden,
1746. See Scott's Waverley.

P. 35, 11. 16, 17. The Tory party had fallen into utter con-
tempt. This had come about during the long period of Whig
ascendancy under Walpole (see note to p. 36, 1. 24). The
marked Jacobite leanings of the more extreme Tories had also
helped to bring them into disrepute.

P. 35, 1. 21. Prince Frederic. The Prince of Wales, son of
George II. and father of George III. He hated his father, and
led a " small faction " of discontents of both parties in opposition
to Walpole. For this reason he is described, under the name of
"his imperial highness" in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (Part I.
chap, iv.) as wearing boots with one heel higher than the other :
the "high heels" and the "low heels" there representing re-
spectively the Tories and the Whigs. He died in 1751.

P- 35. 1- 30- Newcastle. The Duke of Newcastle (1693-1768)
became Prime Minister in 1754, on the death of his brother, Henry
Pelham. He was the head of the government till 1756, and again
from 1757 to 1762. For his character, see further Macaulay's
essays on Horace Walpole (closing paragraphs) and William Pittt
Earl of Chatham.

P. 36, 1. 2. Henry Fox. (1705-1774), the first Lord Holland,
and father of the more famous Charles James Fox. See further
the character-study in the early part of Macaulay's essay on Lord
Holland.

P. 36, 1. 4. the First Lord of the Treasury. Newcastle.
The Treasury is the highest financial department of the State. The
commissioners consist of the First Lord, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and three junior lords, all of them members of the
government. The First Lord is frequently the Prime Minister.

P. 36, 1. II. the Reform Act of 1832. For Macaulay's share
in the passing of this Act, see Introduction, § I.

P. 36, 1. 12. Lord Sandwich. John Montague, fourth Earl
of Sandwich (1718-1792).

P. 36, 1. 24. Sir Robert Walpole. (1676-1745), the great
Whig statesman, who was Prime Minister from 1721 to 1742. He

NOTES 127

was not only unscrupulous, but also cynically outspoken in his un-
scrupulousness. He is the Flimnap of The Voyage to Lilliput in
Swift's Gulliver's Travels. See further Macaulay's essays on
Horace Walpole and War of the Succession in Spain.

P. 37, 11. 6, 7. the resolution was reported to the House.
The House of Commons, sitting as a committee and therefore with
deliberative powers only, reported the resolution to the House as a
legislative body, in which capacity alone it was competent to take

action.

P. 37, 1. 14. the Duke of Cumberland. The second son of
George II. He had crushed out the Jacobite rebellion with such
severity that he was called " The Butcher." His cruelties towards
the Jacobites made him particularly hateful to the Tories. See
also note to p. 72, 1. 31.

P. 38, 1- 6. Gheriah. On the west coast of India, about 70
miles S. of Bombay.

P. 38, 1. 9. Admiral Watson. Charles Watson (I7I4-I757)
entered the navy in 1728, and was appointed chief commander in

India in 1754-

P. 38, 1. 20. Bengal. A lieutenant-governorship in British
India, capital Calcutta. It comprises Bengal Proper, Behar,
Chota-Nagpur, and Orissa.

P. 39, 11. 18, 19. The Castilians have a proverb. As the
proverb implies, the Castilians, who belong to the northern and
central parts of Spain, are a hardier race than the Valencians, who
inhabit the south-east.

P. 40, 1. 4. the Dutch held Chinsurah. Chinsurah, a town
on the right bank of the Hugh'. It was ceded to the British in
1825.

P. 40, 1. 12. Chowringhee. The fashionable quarter of Cal-
cutta.

P. 40, 1. 15. the Course. A favourite drive in Calcutta.

P. 40, 1. 22. Orissa. A province in the south-western part of
Bengal.

P. 40, 1. 23. Bahar. Or Behar, a province of Bengal in the
basin of the Ganges.

P. 42, 1. 19. Mr Holwell. John Zephaniah Holwell (1711-
1798) was a member of the council of the East India Company at
the time when this incident occurred.

128 ESSAY ON CLIVE

P. 43, 11. 18-22. Nothing in history or fiction . . . approaches
the horrors ... of that night. A striking example of Macaulay's
habit of rhetorical over-statement. No one would wish to minimise
the tragedy of the Black Hole ; but in view of the countless tales
of carnage, plague, earthquake, and shipwreck, of which history is
full, to speak of it in this way is manifestly unwarrantable. How
little Macaulay really weighed his words is shown by the fact that
later in this very essay he describes the massacre of Patna as "sur-
passing in atrocity that of the Black Hole " (p. 79).

P. 43, 1. 19. Ugolino. Ugolino della Gheradesca (d. 1289),
leader of the Guelph party in Pisa. In the Inferno, cantos xxxii.
and xxxiii., Dante finds him in the region of everlasting ice (the
second division of the ninth circle of Hell) gnawing the skull of
Archbishop Ruggieri, through whose instrumentality he, with two
sons and two grandsons, had been thrown into prison and left there
to starve to death. He relates his story to Dante, and tells him
how he had witnessed his four young companions perish one by one
of hunger.

P. 45, 1. 4. harem. Arabic, El harim, the "inviolable," the
women's apartments of a Mohammedan house ; also, collectively,
the women of the household.

P. 45, 1. 5. Moorshedabad. Or Murshedabad, the capital of
the district of Bengal of the same name, situated 112 miles N. of
Calcutta.

P. 46, 1. 16. Budge-budge. Or Baj-Baj, a town on the E.
bank of the Hugh' river, 14 miles below Calcutta. "The remains
of a fort which was captured ... by Clive in 1756, are still visible "
(Imperial Gazetteer of India, ix. 45).

P. 46, 1. 3I-P. 47, 1. I. war had commenced in Europe.
This was the Seven Years' War, in which England and Prussia were
united against France, Austria, Russia, Poland, and Sweden. It
began in April 1756. It was now 1757.

P. 48, 1. 31. Omichund. Properly, Amm Chand.

P. 50, 1. 27. Meer Jaffier. Properly, Mir Jafar Khan. He
had married Surajah Dowlah's aunt on his father's side.

P. 53, 1. 25. Cossimbuzar. Or Cossim bazar, formerly the
chief English agency in Bengal. It stood near Moorshedabad, but
its site is now a swamp.

P. 53, 1. 26. Plassey. On the Hugh', 85 miles N. of Calcutta.

NOTES 129

P. 55, 1. 6. the furies. The furies, or erinyes, in Greek
mythology, were originally the avenging spirits of the dead, and
later, the goddesses of vengeance and the personification of the
curses pronounced on an evil-doer. See particularly the Eumenides
of ^schylus, of which play Macaulay is doubtless here specially
thinking.

P. 60, 1. 7. Machiavelli. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), a
Florentine statesman, diplomatist, and author. In his treatise //
Principe (The Prince] he maintains that a ruler should be guided,
not by considerations of morality, but wholly by those of expediency,
and that in politics the end justifies the means. He early became
proverbial as the supreme type of political subtlety and non-moral
statesmanship. See further Macaulay's essay on Machiavelli,

P. 60, 1. 8. Borgia. Cesare Borgia (1478-1507), the most
infamous member of the infamous Borgia family. Machiavelli
was at one time envoy from Florence to his court, and in The
Prince holds him up as a model ruler.

P. 63, 1. 12. florins. The florin was originally struck by the
Florentines in 1252.

P. 63, 1. 12, byzants. The byzant, or bezant, was a gold coin
which took its name from Byzantium (see note to p. 90, 1. 1 1).

P. 63, 1. 29, Marlborough. John Churchill, first Duke of
Marlborough (1659-1722), the most famous English general of his
time. He was made Prince of I\Iendelheim by the Emperor
Joseph I. in 1705.

P. 63, 1. 29. Nelson. Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) received
the estates and title of Duke of Bronte (in Sicily) from Ferdinand
IV., King of Naples, in 1798.

P. 63, 1. 30. Wellington. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Welling-
ton (1769-1852) was made Duke of Vittoria by Ferdinand VII.,
King of Spain, in 1813.

P. 65, 11. 5-7. Lewis the Eighteenth . . . the House of
Bourbon. On the overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo, the
Bourbons were restored to the throne of France in the person of
Louis XVIII., the next younger brother of Louis XVI., who had
perished on the scaffold in 1793-

P. 65, 11. 28, 29. lacs of rupees. Lac (Hindustani, lak) is one
hundred thousand. The rupee, a silver coin, has varied greatly in
value. It is now nominally worth two shillings.

130 ESSAY ON CLIVE

P. 66, 1. 6. born in the purple. Purple has long been the
distinctive colour of the robes of royal and imperial persons.

P. 67, 1. 28. Forde. Francis Forde (d. 1770). " Clive
early perceived his great military abilities " (Dictionary of National
Biography, s.v. Forde). His capture of Masulipatam, in April
!759j won for the British the "tract lying to the north of the
Carnatic " (known as the Northern Circars), which had been in the
possession of the French since 1753.

P. 68, 1. 15. Rohillas. An Afghan tribe who, about the
middle of the eighteenth century, rose to power in Rohilcund (see
note to p. 15, 1. 12).

P. 69, 1. 26. quit-rent. Rent paid in discharge or lieu of
other services.

P. 70, 1. 25. Batavia. On the north coast of Java, still the
capital of the Dutch East Indies.

P- 70, 1. 30. Java. The most important island of the Dutch
East Indies. It was taken by the British in 1811, but restored
to the Dutch in 1816.

P. 72, 1. 16. Pitt. William Pitt (1708-1778), the Whig states-
man, whose influence at this moment was supreme in Parliament
and the country. In 1766 he became Earl of Chatham.

P. 72, 1. 24. the King of Prussia. See note to p. 18, 1. 4.
P. 72, 1. 29. Wolfe. James Wolfe (1727-1759), killed in the
hour of victory at the battle of Quebec.

P. 72, 1. 31. The Duke of Cumberland. His "single
victory " was that at Culloden (see note to p. 37, 1. 16). In his
Continental campaigns he had been singularly unsuccessful.

P. 73, 1. 4. Conway. Henry Seymour Conway (1720-1795)
served in the Seven Years' War, and commanded the British
forces in Germany under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. He
was made commander-in-chief of the British army in 1778.

P. 73, 1. 6. Granby. John Manners, Marquis of Granby
(1721-1770), served with distinction in the Seven Years' War,
and became commander in charge of the British forces under Prince
Ferdinand in 1759, on the dismissal of Sackville.

P. 73, 1. 8. Sackville. George, Viscount Sackville (1716-1785),
commanded the British cavalry in the Seven Years' War, under
Prince Ferdinand, but was dismissed for failing to execute the
Prince's orders to charge the retreating French at the battle of

NOTES 131

Minden. He was thus accused (apparently unjustly) of cowardice
— the imputation to which Macaulay here refers.

P. 73, 1. 12. Minden. A city of Westphalia, Prussia. Near
it, in 1759, the German and English forces under Ferdinand
defeated the French.

P. 73, 1. 12. Warburg. A town of Westphalia where,
in 1760, Ferdinand defeated the French.

P. 74, 1. 27. George Grenville (1712-1770) was Prime
Minister from 1763 to 1765. The prosecution of Wilkes was
one of the chief incidents of his administration ; another, of far
greater moment, was the passing of the Stamp Act, which first
stirred the American colonies to resistance.

P. 74, 1. 29. Wilkes. John Wilkes (1727-1797), a publicist
and political agitator. He was imprisoned for an attack on the
king in the 45th number of his paper, The North Briton, and
on his release became a popular hero. In 1764, he was prosecuted
by Grenville's government, and, flying to France, was tried in
his absence and outlawed. (See Macaulay's essay on the Earl of
Chatham. ) He was afterwards thrice returned to Parliament, and
each time the election was declared void. (See note to p. 102,
1. I.) In 1774 he became Lord Mayor of London, and the same
year was allowed to take his seat in the House of Commons.

P. 75, 11. 7, 8. your Majesty will have another vote. Con-
stitutionally, the king belongs to no party; but George III., in
the interests of the royal prerogative, made a determined effort
to check the power of the great Whig families, who had been
in control of the government during the reigns of his two pre-
decessors, and a faction in Parliament grew up in his support,
which was known as " the king's friends." See Macaulay's essay
on the Earl of Chatham.

P. 75, 1. 26. a Westminster election. Westminster, with
17,000 electors, was one of the largest, and also one of the
most turbulent constituencies of that time.

P. 75, 1. 27. a Grampound election. Grampound, a Cornish
borough with only 25 voters, was notorious, even in those corrupt
days, for its corruption. It was disenfranchised on this account
in 1820.

P. 76, 1. 18. the Sudder courts. Courts of both civil and
criminal jurisdiction (Hindustani sadr, chief).

132 ESSAY ON CLIVE

P. 76, 1. 30. Leadenhall Street. In which was situated the
India House, the headquarters of the Company.

P. 77, 1. 2. Pigot. George, Baron Pigot (1719-1777). He
was appointed governor of Madras in 1775. During his forty years
in India he is said to have amassed a fortune of some ^400,000.

P. 77, 1. 12. the South Sea Year. 1720, the year of the
collapse of the South Sea Bubble. The South Sea Company was
originated in 1711 by Harley, Earl of Oxford, with a view to the
restoration of public credit and the extinction of the floating
national debt. It held a monopoly from the government for
trading in Spanish South America, concerning the wealth of which
fabulous stories were then current. In the spring of 1720 a
gambling mania had seized the nation, and a hundred pounds of
the Company's stock sold for as much as ,£1100. The bursting of
the bubble entailed widespread disaster, and thousands of people
were ruined.

P. 78, 11. 21, 22. The Roman pro-consul. The pro-consul,
or deputy-consul, was an officer who exercised in a specified district
outside the city the same military and judicial powers as the consuls
(or chief magistrates), exercised in Rome itself. Probably Macaulay
has no special individual here in mind. The pro-consuls had ample
opportunity to enrich themselves by extortion and the abuse of their
powers.

P. 78, 1. 24. Campania. In ancient geography, a province on
the west coast of Italy. It was noted for its genial climate and
wonderful fertility. Many of the wealthy Romans had their country
villas here.

P. 78, 1. 26. the Spanish viceroy. Again, Macaulay does not
seem to be referring to any particular individual, but simply to the
general practice of Spanish viceroys. Cervantes satirises this
practice in Don Quixote, for when Sancho Panza is made governor
of the Island of Barataria, he writes to his wife: "A few days
hence I start for the governorship, whither I go with a mighty
desire to make money, and they tell me all new governors set out
with this same desire." The satire is afterwards pointed by the
fact that, despite this declaration, and unlike the majority of
colonial governors, Sancho comes out of his experiences clean-
handed.

P. 79, 11. 12, 13. a massacre . . . Black Hole. A hundred

NOTES X33

and fifty persons were murdered on this occasion. The nabob's
orders were carried out by a Swiss adventurer, whose name,
Sombre, was corrupted into Sumroo. Cp. note to p. 43, 11. 18-22.
P. 80, 11. 30, 31. the Mussulman historian of those times.
Synd Gholam Hussein Khan, the author of a history of the fall
of the Mogul empire.

P. 82, 1. 2. Verres. Caius Verres (d. 43 B.C.). As prseto
of Sicily,' 74-72 B.C., he plundered the island of property and art
treasures. He was brought to trial in 70 B.C. The prosecution
was conducted by Cicero.

P. 82, 1. 2. Pizarro. Francisco Pizarro (1471-1541). l
Spanish conqueror of Peru. He extorted a ransom of 4,605,670
ducats (about ,£3,000,000) for the Inca Atahualpa, whom he after-
wards treacherously put to death. See note to p. I, 1. 7-
P. 86, 11. 6, 7. Sir Thomas Roe. See note to p. 15, 1. 3-
P. 86, 1. 28. propraetor. A Roman officer who exercised
powers very similar to those of the pro-consuls. Under the empire
the title was also given to the governors of imperial provinces.

P. 86, 1. 28. procurators. Managers of the imperial revenues
in the provinces of the Roman empire.

P. 90, 1. 4. the Ricimers. Ricimer (d. 472), the son of a
Suevic chief, rose to great power in the Roman army, and from
457 to his death virtually ruled the Western empire. He did not,
however, venture to assume the title of emperor on account of
his barbaric origin.

P. 90, 1. 4. the Odoacers. Odoacer (cir. 434-493), a cniet
the Heruli and other tribes. In 476 he overthrew the Western
empire and assumed the title of patrician, under which he ruled
the West. He was in turn overthrown and slain by Theodonc

the Goth.

P 90, 1. 10. Theodoric. Called the Great (454-526). A king
of the Goths. He invaded Italy in 488, and having defeated and
killed Odoacer, became the sole ruler of Italy.

P. 90, 1. II. Byzantium. A Greek city which occupied the
eastern part of the site of Constantinople. In 330 Constantine
the Great made it the capital of the Roman empire, and it was
henceforth called Constantinople.

P 90 11. 26-28. Chilperics and Childerics . . . Merovingian
line ... Mayors of the Palace . . . Charles Martel . . .

134 ESSAY ON CLIVE

Pepin. The Merovingian line was a dynasty of Frankish kings
dating from Merwig or Merovseus in the fifth century. Its real
founder was Clovis (cir. 465-511). Chilperic, who became King
of the Franks in 715, was vanquished by Charles Martel (Charles
the Hammer, 690-741), but was allowed to retain the name and
show of royalty. The son of Charles Martel, Pepin the Short
(d. 768), overthrew Childeric III., the last of the line, and assumed
the title of king in 751. The Mayors of the Palace were at first
simply the chief officers of the royal household ; but under the
later Merovingians they wielded the real power, that of the kings
being only nominal.

P. 94, 1. 10. farmer-general. Fermiers-gtntraux was the
name given in France before the Revolution to financiers who
farmed, or leased, the public revenues of the nation. They formed
a privileged association, and as they belonged to the bourgeoisie
or middle classes, they were regarded with jealousy and hatred
by the nobility, many of whom were poor.

P. 94, 1. 13. Burke. Edmund Burke (1729-1797), a celebrated
statesman, orator and writer. The quotation is from his Thoughts
on French Affairs, Dec. 1791.

P. 95, 1. 22. Turcaret. A foolish and unscrupulous financier,
the hero of a comedy of the same name, produced in 1709, by
Lesage, who is best known as the author of Gil Bias.

P. 95, 1. 22. Nero (37-68), the Roman emperor whose name
has become a by-word for cruelty.

P. 95, 11. 22, 23. Monsieur Jourdain. The hero of Moliere's
comedy, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. He is a plain, simple-minded
citizen, who, having made money, is consumed with the desire
to become a "gentleman."

P- 95. 1- 23. Richard the Third. (1452-1485), noted for his
cunning, hypocrisy, and cruelty. The popular conception of him
as a supreme and unqualified villain is largely derived from
Shakespeare's play.

P- 95. !• 30- The Dilettante. A dilettante, or dilettant
(Italian dilettante, from dilettare, to take a delight in) is a lover
or amateur of the fine arts. The word is now frequently used
with a certain suggestion of contempt. There was at the time
in England a society of the name for the encouragement of the
arts. Sir Joshua Reynolds and Garrick were among the members.

NOTES 135

P- 95> !• 31- The Maccaroni. Or macaroni, a current later
eighteenth-century name for a fop or dandy. The Macaroni Club was
"composed of all the travelled young men, who wear long curls
and spying glasses" (Horace Walpole, letter to Lord Hertford,
6th Feb. 1764).

P. 96, 1. 7. Foote brought on the stage an Anglo-Indian
chief. Samuel Foote (1720-1777), actor and dramatist. The play
in question is The Nabob, produced in 1772.

P. 96, 1. 14. Mackenzie. Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831), a
Scottish essayist and novelist, best known for his extremely senti-
mental story, The Man of Feeling. He ridiculed the nabobs in The
Lounger, Nos. 17 and 36.

P. 96, 1. 18. Cowper. William Cowper (1731-1800), the poet,
best known as the author of The Task. The reference is to some
lines in his Expostulation :

" Hast thou, though suckled at fair Freedom's breast,
Exported slavery to the conquered East ?
Pulled down the tyrants India served with dread,
And raised thyself, a greater, in their stead ?
Gone thither armed and hungry, returned full,
Fed from the richest veins of the Mogul,
A despot big with power obtained by wealth,
And that obtained by rapine and by stealth ?
With Asiatic vices stored thy mind,
But left their virtues and thine own behind ;
And, having trucked thy soul, brought home the fee,
To tempt the poor to sell himself to thee."

P. 97, 1. 12. Margery Mushroom. Mrs Mushroom (in
Mackenzie's Lounger, No. 17). The wife of a nabob who has
returned from India with £100,000, she makes herself ridiculous
by her vulgar display and affectations.

P. 97, 1. 22. Sybarite. A person given to pleasure and luxury.
The inhabitants of Sybaris, an ancient city of southern Italy, were
proverbial for their wealth and luxury.

P. 97, 1. 27. Sir Matthew Mite. The hero of Foote's Nabob.

P. 98, 1. 16. Johnson always held this language. On one
occasion Johnson spoke of Clive as "a man who had acquired
his fortune by such crimes, that his consciousness of them impelled

136 , ESSAY ON CLIVE

him to cut his own throat " (Boswell's Life of Johnson, Globe
edition, p. 493).

P. 98, 1. 17. Brown. The anecdote in question was related
by Johnson : ' ' The ingenious Mr Brown, distinguished by the
name of Capability Brown, told me, that he was once at the seat
of Lord Clive, who had returned from India with great wealth ;
and that he had showed him at the door of his bedchamber a large
chest, which he said he had once had full of gold ; upon which
Brown observed, ' I am glad you can bear it so near your bed-
chamber'" (Boswell's Life of Johnson, Globe edition, p. 511).

P. 98, 1. 25. Claremont. In Surrey.

P. 98, 1. 30. Hunt . . . William Huntington, S.S. (1745-
1813), an eccentric preacher, who for many years had a con-
siderable following, and a voluminous writer on theology. On
account of a disreputable incident in his early life, he changed
his name to Huntington to escape identification. The letters S.S.,
which he always used after his name, stand for "sinner saved."

P. 100, 1. 27. Adam Smith. (1723-1790), a Scottish political
economist. Macaulay is probably referring to his discussion of
monopolist companies in his great work, The Wealth of Nations,
Book IV. chap. vii.

P. 101, 11. 14, 15. insurrectionary movements in the
American colonies. The early movements which heralded the
American revolution. Cp. note to p. 74, 1. 27.

P. 101, 1. 18. Lord Chatham. See note to p. 72, 1. 16.

P. 102, 1. I. the Middlesex election. Wilkes (see note to
p. 74, 1. 29) had been three times elected for Middlesex, and the
election had three times been squashed. The government now
assigned the seat to the candidate next on the pole. Great ex-
citement followed, but by this time, as Macaulay says, it had died
down.

P. 102, 1. 21. Rockingham. Charles Watson Wentworth,
second marquis of Rockingham (1730-1782). He was Prime
Minister in 1765 and 1766. See Macaulay's essay on the Earl
of Chatham.

P. 105, 1. 29. Bruce. Robert Bruce (1274-1329), Robert I.
of Scotland, one of the most famous of Scottish heroes. He
murdered the rival claimant to the throne, the Red Comyn, in
1306.

NOTES 137

P. 105, 1. 20. Maurice. (1521-1553), Duke, and afterwards
Elector, of Saxony. Macaulay calls him the deliverer of Germ any
because by the Treaty of Passau, which he compelled the emperor
to sign in 1552, he obtained freedom for the German Protestants.
His character has been much discussed. He was certainly one of
the most enlightened rulers of his age, but he appears to have been
guilty of duplicity and intrigue.

P. 105, 1. 30. William. William I., surnamed the Silent
(i 533. 1 584), Prince of Orange, the deliverer of the Netherlands
from the Spanish yoke. He was throughout his life inspired by
one noble ambition — that of securing the liberty and welfare of his
people. He was, however, accused of treachery to the Spaniards
and the murder of his first wife.

P. 105, 1. 31. his great descendant. William of Orange
(1650-1702), William III. of England (1689-1702). In 1692
occurred the Massacre of Glencoe, in which, amid circumstances
of peculiar atrocity, some forty members of the Macdonald clan
were butchered by royalist troops. William's supposed complicity
in this deed of infamy has left a stain on his name. For a discuss ion
of this question, see Macaulay's History of England.

P. 105, 1. 31. Murray. James Stuart, second earl of Murray,
or Moray (1533-1570), called the "Good Regent." He was the
head of the Protestant party in Scotland in opposition to Mary
Queen of Scots. Very different estimates have been formed of his
character, but it is generally admitted that he was ambitious and hard .

P. 106, 1. I. Cosmo. Cosmo, or Cosimo, de' Medici (1389-
1464), a great Florentine statesman and patron of art and learning.
He maintained his political powe r largely through the skill with
which he contrived to secure for his own partisans the most im-
portant places in the commonwealth.

P. 106, 11. i, 2. Henry the Fourth. (1553-1610), King of
France (1589-1610). He was surnamed both "the Great" and
" the Good," and has been described by one French historian,
Henri Martin, as "the greatest of all the kings of France." He
was, however, guilty of unbridled licentiousness.

P. 106, 1. 2. Peter the Great. Peter I. (1672-1725), Czar of
Russia. He founded St Petersburg, introduced Western civilisation
into Russia, and made it one of the great European powers. But
he was coarse and brutal.

I38 ESSAY ON CLIVE

P. io6,ll. n, 12. Lord North. Francis North (1732-1792),
second earl of Guilford, better known by his courtesy title of Lord
North, which he held till his father's death in 1790, and his own
accession to the earldom. He was Prime Minister from 1770 to
1 782. See Macaulay's essays on Warren Hastings and The Earl
of Chatham.

P. 106, 1. 15. Knight of the Bath. The Order of the Bath is
an order of knighthood, so called from the symbolic rite of bathing,
which originally formed part of the ceremony of initiation. It was
instituted by Henry IV. in 1399, and after a period of disuse revived
by George I. in 1725.

P. 106, 11. 16, 17. Henry the Seventh's Chapel. In West-
minster Abbey.

P. 106, 1. 25. Burgoyne. John Burgoyne (1722-1792), an
English lieutenant-general. He distinguished himself in Portugal
by the capture of Alcantara (1762). He afterwards commanded the
British army which invaded New York in 1777, and surrendered
with nearly 6000 troops to General Gates, at Saratoga, on October
17 of that year, thus forfeiting the reputation of which
Macaulay speaks. In 1787 he was prominent in the impeachment
of Warren Hastings. He holds a small position in English
literature as a dramatist ; his comedy, The Heiress^ produced in
1786, was very successful.

P. 107, 1. 3. Tharlow. Edward, Baron Thurlow (1732-1806),
became Attorney-General in 1771, and was afterwards Lord
Chancellor. He was a Tory leader in the House of Lords, and
was a strong opponent of the cause of the American colonies.

P. 107, 1. 4. Wedderburne. Alexander Wedderburne (1783-
1805), became Solicitor-General in 1771, and was afterwards Chief
Justice (1780-1793), and Lord Chancellor (1793-1801). He was
created Earl of Rosslyn in 1801.

P. 107, 11. 8, 9. Warren Hastings. (1732-1818), went to
Calcutta as writer in the service of the East India Company in
1750; became governor of Bengal in 1772, and first governor-
general of India in 1774. Macaulay's essay gives a brilliant
account of his achievements in India and of his trial ; but expert
criticism has pronounced it in many ways untrustworthy.

P. 108, 1. II. Jenkinson. Charles Jenkinson (1727-1808)
was under-secretary of state in 1761, and joint-secretary to the

NOTES 139

Treasury in 1763. He was one of " the king's friends " (see note
to p. 75, 11. 7, 8) and was specially detested on account of his
supposed secret influence over the king. He was created Earl of
Liverpool in 1796.

P. 108, 1. II. Wilkes. See note to p. 74, 1. 29
P. 108, 1. 25. Lally. Thomas Arthur, Comte de Lally (1702-
1766), a' French general of Irish descent. He was appointed
commander-in-chief of the French army in the East Indies in 1756,
and sustained a siege of ten months in Pondicherry before surrender-
ing to Sir Eyre Coote in 1761. By order of the Parliament of
Paris he was beheaded on an unjust charge of treachery and
cowardice.

P. 109, 1. 2. The contrast struck Voltaire. Voltaire was a
sincere admirer of England and English institutions, and from the
time of his early Lettres Philosophiques, or Lettres sur les Anglais
(the fruit of his exile in this country) had frequently used them
in the way of contrast in his many attacks upon the political and
ecclesiastical despotism existing in France. Lally's son, " known
in the days of the Revolution as Lally Tollendal, was joined by
Voltaire in the honourable work of procuring revision of the pro-
ceedings ; and one of the last crowning triumphs of Voltaire^s
days was the news brought to him on his dying bed, that his
long effort had availed" (Morley's Voltaire, p. 359). In the highly
rhetorical passage which follows (11. 9- 18). Macaulay is by no means
fair to Voltaire, whose magnificent work for humanity in many
causes has, far more than even his brilliant literary successes,
given lasting glory to his name.

P. 109, 11. 6, 7. Dr Moore. John Moore (1730-1802), a
miscellaneous writer, whose novel, Zeluco : Various Views of Human
Nature, taken from Life and Manners, Foreign and Domestic
(1786) was much read at the time. He visited Voltaire during
his six years' travel on the Continent as medical attendant to the
Duke of Hamilton.

P. 109, 11. 26, 27. "which rejoiceth exceedingly ... the
grave." Job iii. 22.

P. ill, 1. 27. the fall of Ghizni. The capture of Ghizni,
or Ghazni', on July 23, 1839, was one of the most brilliant British
victories of the first Afghan war.
P. iii. 1. 3I-P- 112, 1. 4. Alexander, Conde, and Charles

I4o ESSAY ON CLIVE

the Twelfth . . . Granicus . . . Rocroi . . . Narva.
Alexander III. (B.C. 356-323),King of Macedon, called "the Great,"
gained his first victory over the Persians on the banks of the
Granicus (a small river in Asia Minor) in 334 B.C., at the age of
twenty-two. Louis II. de Bourbon, Prince de Conde (1621-1686),
called "the Great Conde," defeated the Spaniards at Rocroi (a
town in the French Ardennes) in 1643, at the age of twenty-two.
Charles XII. (1682-1718), King of Sweden, defeated the Russians
at Narva (a town in the government of St Petersburg) in ijoo,
at the age of eighteen.

P. 112, 1. 2O. the Sacred Way. Via Sacra, the first street
in ancient Rome made on the low ground beneath the hills. Some
of the oldest and most revered sanctuaries of Rome stood upon it.

P. 1 12, 1. 2O. the crowded Forum. The Forum Romanorum,
the political centre of ancient Rome.

P. 112, 1. 21. the threshold of Tarpeian Jove. The temple
of Jupiter on the Mons Capitolinus, the smallest but most famous
of the seven hills on which Rome is built. The Tarpeian rock
was at its southern extremity.

P. 112, 11. 21, 22. The fame of those who subdued Anti-
ochus and Tigranes. Antiochus XIII., surnamed Asiaticus,
King of Syria, was defeated by Pompey in 65 B.C. Tigranes,
King of Armenia, was defeated by Lucullus (see note to p. 113,
1. 25), at the battle of Tigranocerta, 69 B.C.

P. 113, 1. 16. Munro. Sir Thomas Munro (1761-1827),
governor of Madras from 1819 to his death. A wise administrator,
he is perhaps best remembered for his reform of the Madras land
system.

P. 113, 1. 16. Elphinstone. Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-
1846), governor of Bombay from 1819 to 1827, and the author of
a History of India.

P. 113, 1. 16. Metcalfe. Charles Theophilus, Baron Metcalfe
(1785-1846). He was provisional governor of British India in
1835 and 1836, and lieutenant-governor of the North-west Pro-
vinces from 1836 to 1838.

P. 113, 1. 25. Lucullus. Lucius Lucinius Lucullus (cir. 1 10 B.C.-
57 B.C.), a Roman general. He was perhaps even more famous
for his wealth and luxury than for his military achievements.

P. 113, 1. 25. Trajan. Marcus Ulpius Trajanus (cir. 53-117),

NOTES

Roman emperor. Before ascending the throne in 98, he was
famous as a warrior. He did much to develop and strengthen
the defences of the empire.

P. 113, 1. 27. Turgot. Anne Robert Turgot (i727-i7»I)> a
wise French statesman and political economist. As controller-
general he projected many reforms ; but all the privileged classes
-courtiers, nobles, fanners-general, prelates, financiers-saw that
their interests were threatened by them, and combined to compass
his overthrow. Had he been allowed his way, the catastrophe c
1789 would probably have been averted.

Pi 13 1. 29. Lord William Bentinck. William Cavendish
Beniinck' ( 1774- 1*39) was appointed governor of Madras in 1803,
governor-general of Bengal in 1827, and governor-general of Indu
in i8« He abolished the suttee (the form of sacrifice in whici
the widow was burnt on her dead husband's funeral pyre), and
put down the Thugs (a fraternity of assassins, who lived by murdei
and the plunder of their victims). The statue to Bentinck
Calcutta, to which reference is here made, bears an mscnptu
written by Macaulay.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF EVENTS IN
THE LIFE OF CLIVE AND IN THE
HISTORY OF INDIA

1707. Death of the Emperor

Aurenzebe.
1725. Clive born (zgth Sept.).

1 739-4° • Nadir Shah invades

India.

1741. Dupleix becomes Gover-
nor of Pondicherry.
1743. Leaves for India.

1744. War declared with

France.
1746-49. War between English

and French in the Coromandel

Coast.
1746. Madras surrenders to

Labourdonnais.

1748. Pondicherry besieged by
the English.

1748-49. Peace of Aix-la-Chap-
elleand restoration of Madras
to the English.

1749. Beginning of the War of
Succession in the Carnatic.

1750-54. War between the Eng-
lish and French Companies.
1751. Clive's defence of Arcot.

142

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

1753. Marriage to Margaret
Maskelyne. Returns to Eng-
land .

1755. Returns to India.

1753. The French vacate Trich-
inopoly.

1754. Recall of Dupleix to
France. Peace between the
English and French Com-
panies.

1756. Rupture between the
English and the French.
Calcutta taken by the Nabob
of Bengal. The massacre of
the Black Hole.

1757. Clive recovers Calcutta (Jan.) ; and gains a great
victory at Plassey (June).

1757. The English occupy
Bengal.

1758. Lally reaches India ;
1758-59. lays siege to Madras ;
1760. and is defeated at Vande-

wash .
1760-65. Misrule in Bengal.

1760. Returns to England.

1761. Enters parliament
member for Shrewsbury.

1762. Raised to the Irish peer-
age as Baron Clive of Plassey.

1764. Created Knight of the
Bath;

1761. Pondicherry surrendered
to the English.
Defeat of the Mahrattas by
Ahmed Shah at Parriput.

1763. Pondicherry restored to
France. French rivalry in
India closed by the Peace of
Paris.
Massacre of English at Patna.

144 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

1764. Hector Munro's victory

at Buxar.
1765: Returns to India.

1765. Enters into treaty of alliance with Oudh and the

Mogul emperor.

1766. Treaty with Nizam of Northern Circars.
1767. Returns to England. 1767-69. First war with Hyder

Ali of Mysore.

1772. His proceedings in India
debated in parliament. Ap-
pointment of select parlia-
mentary committee on Indian
affairs.

1773. Report of committee con-
demning his conduct rejected.

1774. Clive commits suicide
(22nd Nov.).

Date Due

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